


The Boys of Summer

by afirethatcannotdie



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Camping, Fluff and Smut, M/M, OT5 Friendship, Oral Sex, Pining, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:53:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7471665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afirethatcannotdie/pseuds/afirethatcannotdie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“I mean…we’re gonna have to sneak around anyway, yeah? Like, with that whole rules thing that I guess we’ve decided to ignore. Might make it a little more fun this way.”</em>
</p><p>AU. In which Louis is a reluctant sports coach, Harry's a fellow counselor who wears tiny yellow shorts, and camp rules say they're forbidden to date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boys of Summer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gettingaphdinlarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gettingaphdinlarry/gifts).



> Ahh where do I begin? This story was so much fun to write. Thank you so much to my friends who listened to me talk about this for weeks and gave me encouragement and ideas - you know who you are. You're the best. 
> 
> A huge thank you goes out to my betas, [Bella](http://rosesandlarry.tumblr.com/) and [Micky](http://typicalmicky.tumblr.com/). Thanks for pointing out all my mistakes and saying, "hey this is good, but you know what would make it ten times better?" I couldn't have done this without your help.

“Louis, please, if you can’t do this for yourself, please do it for me,” his mum begs. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have signed up you without asking first, but you need a job and this pays well. Gets you out of here and expands your horizons. Please.”

“Fine,” Louis sighs, hands raised in surrender. “Not like I have much choice now anyway, huh?”

“Oh, thank you, Lou,” his mum says, entirely far too enthusiastic for Louis' liking. “It’ll be the best summer of your life, just you watch.”

*

Two weeks later, he’s getting out of a cab in the woods in New Hampshire, a state he couldn’t have located until last night, when his mum pulled out a map of the United States, pointed to a spot in the Northeast and said, “This is where you’ll be living for the next eleven weeks.”

“Thanks, mate,” he says to the cab driver, shutting the door with a slam after fumbling with a number of American dollar bills. Why is all their money fucking _green_ , he wants to know, whose idea was that? He’ll never get an answer from anyone, he’s sure, but he would love to have a chat with whoever came up with it and give them a good talking to.

The cabbie pulls away and he’s left with two suitcases and a giant backpack, staring up at the sign that leads to the camp entrance. The sign is old and rotting, the letters carved into a large piece of plywood that hangs above the road.

Camp Timber Lake.

He doesn’t exactly want to be here; it certainly wasn’t his first choice of how he could spend this summer. No, that dream fell apart when his job at his friend Stan’s company fell through. So being a summer camp counselor was never part of his plans, especially not in the States. Louis has always loved kids, sure, but that doesn’t mean that he wants to spend his summer being a caretaker.

He’s here now, though, and he will be for the rest of the summer.

With that thought, he picks up the handles of his suitcases and wheels them along to the camp director’s office.

*

“This is your cabin then, Louis. Cabin 18,” Simon Cowell announces as he opens the door to a wooden structure and leads Louis in. The screen door turns on its hinges behind him and slams with a loud bang.

“Looks…cozy,” Louis says with a small smirk, for lack of anything else to say.

“This will be your bed, I guess,” Simon tells Louis. “It looks like Liam’s already claimed this one.” Thank God he gets to sleep on a single bed; he doesn’t want to deal with a bunk bed, has never been a huge fan of them after an incident on holiday where he had to share with his little sisters. Being a counselor has some perks, at least.

“Lunch is at one; I expect you to be on time. We’ll have the preliminary meeting then, and you’ll get to meet the rest of the staff, get to know the people you’ll be working with this summer.”

“Where is that meeting?”

“The dining hall. Just go down this path and it’s about three minutes down on the path on your left,” Simon says as he opens the door to leave. “And Louis? I’m glad this worked out, especially so last minute like this. Ben and I are glad to have you. You’ve come highly recommended. See you soon.”

The door slams again as he leaves and Louis shivers. There’s something just _off_ about Simon, despite his outwardly pleasant demeanor. He can’t articulate what it is exactly, but there’s a feeling buzzing low in his gut that tells him not to trust him entirely.

Louis flops down on the bed that will be his for the next eleven weeks and stares up at the ceiling. He watches the paddles of the fan go around and around and around, listens for the little _ding_ of the chain hitting the side with each rotation. The cabin itself is fine, even though the whole thing is made of wood and it looks like it’d collapse in about five seconds if it caught fire.

But for all the horror he was expecting, the sarcastic quip he made about it being cozy, it’s fairly spacious. There’s five bunk beds against each wall and then two single beds in the middle, facing each other. There’s a table in the middle and there are a bunch of windows lining two sides. Ten bunk beds with two kids each is twenty kids. He’s going to be in charge of twenty children, _shit_ , he and this Liam bloke are going to be in charge of all of these little monsters.

With a sigh, he stands up and gets to unpacking his things into the trunk at the end of the bed.

It’s going to be a long summer.

*

“Mr. Tomlinson, you’re late.”

“I’m sorry; I lost track of time,” Louis apologizes as he approaches the dining hall, Simon standing at the door with a clipboard.

“It’s alright,” Simon amends, “we’re still waiting on a few other people. Please don’t let it happen again.”

Louis nods and then enters the hall.

There’s a number of people standing around in small groups, and Louis is annoyed to see that most of them are wearing name tags. He’s not wearing any goddamn name tag, that’s for sure. He’s an adult.

Not thirty seconds later, he’s still standing in the doorway when a woman comes up to him with a sticker with his name printed in big letters. “You’re Louis, yeah? You’re wearing this,” she says by way of a greeting, and he doesn’t bother to ask how she knows his name, just watches as she leans forward and sticks it on his chest. It’s a violation of his personal space and she hasn’t asked, but he feels momentarily paralyzed to say no. So, a lot of things are going different than he wants them to, apparently.

“You can go on and join the group then, I’m sure they’ll all be wanting to meet you.” She’s gone then, off to the next unsuspecting victim.

He walks further into the room and a boy comes bounding up to him, full of energy like a puppy. He’s got brown eyes and a backwards snapback and he looks entirely too enthusiastic for Louis' liking, but Louis is a summer camp counselor now and enthusiasm is going to have to be the name of the game.

“Hi, Lewis, I’m Liam. We’re going to be in the same cabin all summer, so figured I might as well come say hello now!” The first thing Louis notices is that he’s British too. Well, that’s a plus. The second thing is that he’s also wearing a nametag. The third is that Liam extends his hand for a handshake, which Louis reciprocates, and then pulls his hand back quickly.

“Uh, hi, nice to meet ya, mate. It’s Louis, though. Like the French way.” He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly, more for something to do than anything else.

“Oh, okay, sorry, well it’s nice to meet you, Louis. Here, let’s take a seat.” For lack of anything else to do, Louis lets himself be led to a chair that’s on the edge of the circle of chairs and watches as Liam takes the one next to him. He’s got a very serious look on his face.

“Alright, so I was thinking that it’d be good if we worked out our discipline strategy ahead of time, you know, like how we’re going to deal with the boys, what we’re going to do if they misbehave, the whole lot. What d’you think?” He’s leaning forward, his elbows perched on his knees, head held in his hands, and his eyes reflect the eagerness in his voice.

Louis bursts out a laugh. “Oi, good one, mate. That’s funny.” Liam raises one eyebrow, expectant. “Oh, you…you were serious.”

Liam nods. “Yeah, I think we should work it all out before they get here.”

“I mean…” Louis runs a hand down his face, blinks twice, and sees that Liam is still waiting for him to give him an answer. “We don’t even know how old these kids are, how are we -”

“They’re thirteen,” Liam cuts in, “a bunch of thirteen year old boys. And I don’t know about you, Louis, I mean, I didn’t grow up with brothers, but from everything I’ve heard, thirteen year old boys can be more than a handful. Just thought we could try and get a leg up ahead of time…”

“I mean, sure, I’m not entirely opposed to the idea, but you think maybe you might want to wait until this first meeting’s over? Who knows what they’ll be telling us, and it’d be a waste to plan something only to have to find out we need to scrap it all because of a little regulation we didn’t know about.”

Liam looks a bit distressed, brings his hands up to adjust his snapback unnecessarily, and then doesn’t get a chance to refute anything Louis has just said because Simon calls them all to attention.

“Welcome, all of you, to Camp Timber Lake. I’m thrilled that we’re about to open our seventeenth season of camp here. I’m Simon, the camp director, and this is Ben Winston, my second in command. We’re very happy to have you here with us. We know some of you have come an awful long way, and we’d like to give those of you who’ve traveled from the UK a special welcome to the United States. You’ll all be meeting each other shortly, and we hope you’ll all become great friends this summer.”

Simon spends the next fifteen minutes droning on about how wonderful the camp experience can be, but mostly he talks about himself; how he’s changed not just the lives of thousands of campers but also those of many counselors too.

Louis wants to lean over to Liam and whisper that it all sounds like a bit of bullshit to him, but something tells him Liam won't take it with the humor Louis intends. He settles for trapping his hands in his thighs so he can't fidget anymore and commits to listening intently.

That lasts about a minute and a half before his mind starts to wander. Louis ends up looking around at the people gathered in the circles, technically his co-workers. Weird.

There’s a girl with bright pink hair and a bunch of piercings; she's got a name tag that tells him her name Annie. She’s next to a boy with obviously dyed blonde hair named Niall. On his other side is a slightly older guy who’s somehow managed to avoid wearing a name tag; Louis wonders how he got away with that one.

“I trust that you all will be able to follow these rules and we can have the best possible week,” Simon is saying when Louis turns his attention back to him. Shit. That whole ‘listening intently’ thing hadn't gone so well. He’d have to wheedle the information out of Liam later, presumably in the interest of choosing the best discipline strategy, or something.

“So, like I was saying, this afternoon we’ll be having a camp bonfire after dinner. Your time from then until now is your own,” he continues, and Louis can swear he hears the entire room let out a quiet sigh, “after we play this icebreaker game. I want you to get to know each other and for you to get to know my administrative staff too.”

Louis genuinely couldn't give two shits about the administrative staff, even though he knows his mum called in a favor with that bloke Ben for him to get this job. But then he thinks of his mum’s face, her pleas when she asked Louis to come here, and he resolves that for one week, he will be on his absolutely best behavior and give this his full attention. After that week, all bets are off.

The man without the name tag stands up to start off the game. He’s got brown hair that’s done up in a quiff and he has a big smile as he gives a little wave. “Hiya, I’m Nick Grimshaw, the communications manager here at Camp Timber Lake. I’m from the Manchester area, that's a bit north of London, for you clueless Americans,” he begins cheekily, pulling at his red flannel shirt. “I’m part of Simon’s giant master plan to recruit as many Europeans to this camp for absolutely no reason at all, other than the fact that it sounds good on paper. So the game we’re going to play is called Two Truths and a Lie, and yes, I hate icebreakers as much as you all do, but I have to do my job. So let’s get on with it.”

In a corner of the room, Simon is frowning, arms crossed over his chest while Nick speaks.

By virtue of being next to Nick, the boy called Niall goes first. “Hi, I’m Niall, I’m twenty one, from Mullingar, in Ireland. I, uh…what is it again? I say two things that are true and one that's a lie?”

Nick nods. Niall looks nervous, poor thing.

“Okay, I can play guitar, I’ve traveled all over the States, and…hm. I have a dodgy knee.”

A boy named William raises his hand. He’s American. “Uh, you don’t know how to play guitar?”

Niall shakes his head. “No, I do. This is actually the first time I’ve ever been to America, that’s the lie.”

“You’re supposed to let them guess what the lie is,” Nick says gently, and Niall sits down, an embarrassed flush on his face. “But that’s okay, we could be here all day if we played that way. Niall, why don’t you choose someone to go next.”

 _Please don’t pick me,_ Louis thinks, and of course, _of course_ , Niall looks across the circle of bodies and points directly at Louis.

Louis' hand comes up to fix his fringe as he stands up and wipes his hands on the side of his jeans. “Uh, hi, how’s it going. I’m Louis, I’m 21, from Doncaster in South Yorkshire. I wish I’d thought of these ahead of time, but uh...I’ve got four younger sisters, I like to play piano, and I played rugby in uni.”

Louis doesn't get to find out what they think the lie is because there's a crash in the hallway and someone bursts into the dining hall, tripping over himself, the door slamming behind him with a bang.

“Oh, shit. Sorry.”

The whole room turns at once to see a tall boy standing there, chest heaving like he’s just run a mile. He’s got two bags on each shoulder, looking like he’s about to collapse from the weight of them.

He locks eyes with Louis, who’s the only one in the room standing, the most obvious target. Louis feels the breath go out of him. He’s beautiful. “Sorry, like I said on the phone, traffic issues.”

“That’s alright, Mr. Styles,” Simon replies, standing up from where he’s been perched on a chair behind the rest of the group for the past fifteen minutes. “Glad you made it. Why don’t you put down your bags and grab a chair and squish in.”

Louis watches from the center of the circle as the boy drops his bags with a loud thud near the doorway and fetches a chair that he squeezes in next to Louis' empty chair. The people around him push out a bit so there’s room for him.

Louis watches him throughout this, a quiet observance for something to do while he waits for him to settle in. He’s wearing a purple floral shirt, black skinny jeans with holes in the knees, brown suede boots. He has a sharp jawline, deep green eyes like the color of Louis' favorite football pitch, and despite coming in late and interrupting the whole scene, he carries himself with grace. Louis is immediately intrigued. He wants to know more about him.

“Okay, Louis, carry on,” Nick says after the new guy is sitting between a boy called Matt and Louis' empty chair. Liam sits on the other side, looking vaguely distressed. Probably doesn't have time for games, doesn't like fun.

“Ok, uh, so what was I saying?” He asks, eyes fixed on the new guy’s face for just a beat too long to be entirely normal before he turns and looks in the other direction. “I've got four younger sisters, I like to play piano and…I played rugby in uni. Was that it?”

Niall nods. Someone named Zayn guesses that he doesn't look like a rugby player (“you're not tall enough, mate!”) and Louis is forced to concede that no, he was not actually involved in any sports at uni. Played loads of football on the side, sure, but nothing official.

When Louis sits down, the boy gives him a smile that’s bright and genuine and Louis is dismayed to see that he has a fucking dimple. Because of course he does. Because it's not enough for him to be ridiculously attractive, but he also has to be English (Louis himself is English, yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s immune to a posh accent) _and_ have a dimple. What a bloody trifecta.

A few minutes later and Louis has learned that his name is Harry, he’s twenty one, he’s from Cheshire, and he used to be a baker. He’s got an older sister named Gemma and he’s going to be the culinary arts teacher. He speaks very slowly and his lie is that he’s captain of his football team (“I’m rubbish, honestly, I doubt they’d even let me on the pitch if I asked.”) The last thing Louis learns is that he is stupidly attracted to him.

Well, Louis is fucked.

*

“So I was thinking that we could have some kind of behavioral system, you know, with stickers or maybe with prizes,” Liam rambles as soon as they get back to their cabin after the meeting.

Liam had pounced on him the second the meeting had ended, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him away, demanding they ‘sit down to have a chat about how they were going to make sure these kids survived the summer.’ Louis insisted they at least stop to get a cup of tea first, wanted to finish the sandwich he’d started eating back in the hall during the meeting.

Liam slides onto the bench that’s attached to the table and while Louis would love nothing more than to collapse onto his bed and take a nap, Liam gives him a look that’s a mix between eager puppy and serious businessman. He takes a seat across from him, warms his perpetually cold hands on the sides of the cup.

“What are you thinking about?” Liam asks after a moment.

Louis could tell him the truth. He could tell him that all he’s been thinking about for the past 45 minutes is that fucking dimple on Harry Styles’ fucking face and how he wants to lick whiskey out of it and how he’s already stupidly attracted to him and how he’s going to have to avoid Harry all summer. He could tell him that the worst moment of his entire day was when Simon reminded them that there were to be absolutely no relationships among counselors, that their focus needed to be on the children at all times, that they were expected to keep it in their pants for ten weeks, otherwise they’d lose their jobs and have to pay a $1,000 fine for being kicked out of camp early. He could tell him that he’s absolutely fucked for the summer already, and unfortunately it’s not likely to be in the literal sense.

Instead, he takes a deep breath, smiles, and says, “Why don’t we get to know each other?”

*

“Louis, Louis, you better wake up or you'll be late for the bonfire.”

A voice is calling to him, someone’s shaking his shoulder. He opens his eyes with a yawn. It's Liam, standing ridiculously close to his face.

“Oh good, you're awake,” says Liam.

“I am now, I guess,” Louis answers, his voice raspy. He closes his eyes for a moment and when he opens them, Liam is still standing right there, peering down at him like he's some kind of zoo animal.

“Can you, you know, back up or something, mate?”

Liam’s eyes widen, and he takes two big steps back. Louis swings his leg down onto the ground and stretches his arms into the air. The sky outside is getting dark, and he’s getting hungry; the sandwich hadn’t done much to fill him.

“This opening barbeque better be good,” Louis comments idly as he pulls on a worn pair of Vans. “I’m starving.”

“Me too,” Liam agrees. “Feel like I left England ages ago.”

“How’d you end up here from Wolverhampton anyway?” Louis asks as he pulls a sweatshirt out of the trunk at the foot of his bed. While Liam had been rambling about different things he’d learned as a camp counselor at other camps, Louis had taken the time to finish unpacking. Then he’d lay down in bed and tried to fall asleep, all while Liam was still talking. To say Liam was a bit serious about this whole thing would be a bit of an understatement; any second now, Louis expects him to whip out a binder full of post-its and color coded highlights. The two of them are going to have to work out their issues at some point, but Louis doesn’t much feel like getting into an argument on day one.

He pulls the sweatshirt over his head and checks to see if Liam is ready to go. Liam tilts his head to the door, Louis nods and then they leave the cabin, the door slamming shut behind them. Louis will have to check with Simon to see if there’s a way to fix that; the slamming is already driving him nuts and he’s only been here a handful of hours. He can’t handle an entire summer of it.

“I’ve a friend who worked for Simon here last summer, he was the music teacher, which is what I’ll be doing. Took his spot, basically.” Louis raises an eyebrow at this, looks over at Liam to assess him again in light of this knowledge.

“You know music?”

“Oh, definitely. I mean, mostly vocal stuff, but I can play a mean tin whistle too,” Liam explains with a smile, the first genuine smile Louis has seen since they met a few hours ago.

“I can play piano,” Louis admits.

“I know, you mentioned it earlier as part of the game. Maybe we can start a band.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll see,” Louis says, as they approach the hall where they had lunch earlier. He’s thinking about how he would've killed to have the music teacher spot, except for the fact that he got this job last minute and then only because he was filling someone else’s spot. At least he’ll be leading the sports section; hopefully he can convince the kids to play footie everyday.

There’s a clearing just ahead of them, the group gathered in various little groups. Just before they reach it, Louis looks to his left.

The sun is setting over the lake, a mix of red and orange and pink and yellow reflected over the water. It's absolutely gorgeous, one of the most beautiful sights Louis has ever seen, and he stops to take it in for a minute. Suddenly he spots a person standing there, taking photos with their iPhone. They turn around and it's Harry. Of course it is. He’s too far away to really make out the fact that it's Liam and Louis, so Louis tugs on Liam’s arm and pulls him the last two hundred feet to the barbecue.

“Come on; we don't want them to run out of food.”

*

Two burgers later, Louis is standing talking to the blonde bloke from Ireland, Niall Horan. The first thing Niall did when they met was apologize for choosing Louis in the ice breaker activity earlier - “I’m sorry mate, I panicked, had to pick someone, you were the first one I saw!” Louis laughs and gives him a small punch on the upper arm and tells him not to worry about it.

“So what brings you here?” Niall then asks, sipping from his Sprite can. Louis hoped there would be alcohol, but apparently there were three nineteen year old counselors so Simon wouldn't allow it. When he heard the news, Louis briefly considered hunting them down and telling them to get out of town. “Seems like there’s loads of Europeans here. I mean, I guess cause Simon’s English. But still.”

“Yeah, yeah, there do seem to be a lot, doesn't there?” Louis says, bouncing on his toes a little bit. He feels a bit twitchy, full of energy, like he’s incapable of staying in one position for too long. He keeps looking around nervously, like he’s looking for something. He _knows_ what it is, knows that it’s someone he keeps looking for rather than something.

“I was meant to go work for my friend Stan’s dad’s company this summer,” Louis explains. “I just finished uni a few months ago, so I was living at home. Wouldn’t have been anything special, just working in an office while I looked for acting jobs down in London, but a job’s a job, right?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Harry’s talking to Nick Grimshaw. They’re standing close, and Nick’s laughing at whatever Harry’s just said. Louis knows nothing about Nick, but he kind of hates him a little bit all the same. He pulls his eyes away and focuses back on Niall, striving for casual. Yeah, Louis can totally do casual.

“So, two weeks ago I found out that they didn’t need me in the office after all. I was down in London when I got the call, trying out for a role I didn’t end up getting. By the time I got back to Doncaster, my mum told me that she’d seen a post on Facebook looking for a sports counselor at this camp in America. She has a friend who’s friends with Ben, I guess? She applied for me and I guess they were desperate because they picked me, and now here I am.” Louis gives a little shrug then, trying to convey at the same time both the ridiculousness of the whole ordeal and his mixed feelings about being here for the summer.

“Oh wow. So you’ve never done this before? And your mum forced you into coming?” Niall says, eyes wide.

“Well, I s’pose she didn’t force me. If I _really_ didn’t want to I could’ve found another job. But I figured, why not go to the States for the summer? There’s worse things I could be doing.”

“Very true. I guess I’m just shocked cause I’ve known I’d be doing this for months, almost since last summer. My professor at uni suggested it, said it’d be good experience for my CV.”

“What are you studying at uni?” Louis asks, eyes scanning the camping area for Harry again. He’s ridiculously curious, but Louis also doesn’t even want to talk to him; he knows he’ll be in trouble if he does. It’s like the two of them are magnets, drawn to each other. Any time Louis goes to talk to someone new, Harry seems to move on to a different person as well, stays in his orbit all the time. Louis spots Harry talking to Ed, a ginger guy also from England.

The bonfire itself is in full swing now, with a whole group of people roasting marshmallows for s’mores and a few gathered around the wooden chairs surrounding the circle. The bonfire had been lit at some point during the time Louis was talking to Ed, or maybe Aiden, or possibly Eleanor. All lovely people, to be sure; hopefully Louis will be able to learn all of their names sometime before all the kids arrive.

“I’m studying languages, would love to move back to Ireland and teach Spanish or French in a secondary school,” Niall explains. “That’s why I’m teaching the languages here, teach them all a bit of European languages. You know how Americans are, the only language they can speak is English,” he jokes, and Louis genuinely chuckles at that one.

“I can speak a bit of French but I haven’t taken it in years now so I’m probably just as bad as all the Americans,” Louis admits.

“Alright, well I’ll have to see if I can get some of it back into your head,” Niall teases, and then his eyes widen. “Hey, you want to make a s’more? Never had one before, at least not one I didn’t make in the microwave.”

Louis nods and next thing he knows the two of them are sitting on wooden Adirondack chairs that they’ve pulled up to the edge of the campfire, long wooden branches in their hands as they toast marshmallows over the fire. Louis has a chocolate bar next to him and a box of graham crackers sits in Niall’s lap. Niall’s already eaten two graham crackers in the time it’s taken their marshmallows to roast, but there seems to be enough to go around.

The sky’s been dark for ages now, has been since around the time the staff started the campfire, and up close by the glow of the fire Niall looks a bit otherworldly, like a blonde Irish angel.

Louis is too busy looking around at the rest of the camp staff to notice that his marshmallow has caught fire.

“Louis, mate, watch it!” Niall yells suddenly, pulling back on Louis' arm and grabbing the stick with it. He blows out the fire on the marshmallow, which is officially black and burnt all the way round.

“Think you’ll have to go get a new one, Louis,” Niall sighs, his face scrunched up at the sight of it. Niall’s own marshmallow is perfectly bronzed, a golden thing that he’s already squished in between some chocolate and a pair of graham crackers.

Louis moves to grab his own marshmallow from Niall all the same. “No, just give it to me, I’ll eat it, it’s fine.”

“Louis, those are carcinogens all over it! You’re really going to eat it?”

Louis shrugs. “If it kills me, it kills me. Gonna die eventually anyway.”

Niall looks on with thinly veiled amusement as Louis forms the s’more and pops the whole thing into his mouth in one go. “Yum!” he exclaims, his mouth full of food.

“Ew, you’re gross, stop it, put that away,” Niall says, his hand coming up to cover Louis' mouth. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s rude to chew with your mouth open?”

Louis swats his hand away, and it’s only after that he realizes it’s a bizarre display of closeness between two people who have just met. But hey, sometimes you just meet someone and feel you’ve known them for much longer. That’s a little bit of what he feels with Niall sitting here by the fire.

“Okay, now that it’s gone I can admit that a scorched s’more was not the _greatest_ thing I've ever had, but at least it had chocolate. I’m getting another; you want one?”

Niall nods, and Louis gets up to get two more marshmallows. He’s delayed by Eleanor and Annie, an American girl from California, who are in the line ahead of him, and he makes pleasant small talk with them before getting his marshmallows.

When he gets back, Niall is a few feet away talking to Ed and in his place sits Harry, rolling the toasting stick around and around in his palms, and when Louis approaches Harry flashes that dimpled smile. Fucking great. This is what he gets for not paying closer attention. Louis is well aware he has a flair for the dramatics, but he’s been in trouble when faced with pretty boys far too often.

He smiles warily as he sits down in his original seat, and resists the urge to scoot his chair far, far away from this boy that he really shouldn’t even be talking to, if he’s smart.

“Hi,” he says quietly. “Harry, right?” Oh god, does he sound casual? He hopes he sounds appropriately casual. He wants to look away, wants to toast his marshmallow for something to do, but that seems rude. He also wants to kiss Harry until they’re both breathless, but that is definitely off the cards. The smartest option is probably to run away and find Liam and make him bore him to death with disciplinary plans until he falls asleep. Louis thinks he’d prefer that to this.

“Hi, yeah, Harry. And you’re Louis, yeah? We didn’t really get the chance to talk earlier so I thought I’d introduce myself,” Harry explains, extending his hand for Louis to shake. Because _of-fucking-course_ Harry is not only stupidly attractive but endearingly polite. His mother raised him well.

Louis takes his hand, holds it for a beat too long when he shakes it. God, his hand is really fucking massive.

“D’you want a s’more?” he offers then, just for something to say.

If he’s going to sit here with Harry and make small talk, he might as well follow Harry’s lead and be polite. His mother raised him well too.

“I’d like that,” Harry answers, and when his hand brushes Louis' to take the s’more he smiles, dimple in full view.

Yep, Louis is fucked.

*

He’s at breakfast the next morning, Liam regaling him with tales of his summer spent working at a summer camp in Scotland while he sips his tea - Yorkshire, thank God for Simon, Louis might actually make it through this summer after all.

“So, the director was like, this super lazy bloke who never went anywhere. And I just wanted to take the kids up for a run around the castle, you know, a bit of a jog? And he refused, said that much physical activity would be bad for their health.” Liam scoffs. “I mean, can you believe that? What a prick.”

Louis is about to answer with just how much he can't believe it, no, what an arse, how could he, when suddenly Harry strolls into the dining hall. Harry’s wearing a white Rolling Stones t-shirt and his curly hair is done up in some kind of quiff and - _Jesus_ are those denim shorts? Yes, yes they are, and they were solely made with the intention to kill Louis, he’s sure of it.

Louis watches as Harry makes his way to the breakfast bar and scoops himself some yogurt. Louis makes a noncommittal noise to encourage Liam to keep talking about his ridiculous former boss as Harry pours coffee into a lime green mug. When he’s done he turns around and heads for the tables. The dining hall isn’t that crowded, a few people sitting and chatting at each table, but Harry’s searching the room like he’s looking for someone specific.

_Oh God._

Louis scoots over on the bench so that he’s pressed up against the wall, contorting his body to hide behind Liam.

“Okay, yeah, and then what happened?” He asks Liam as he keeps his head down, suddenly finding his cereal mix of Coco Pops and Cheerios very interesting, the most riveting thing he’s seen all week, actually. He lifts his eyes for a brief second and can see Harry approaching the table, so he curves into himself and tries to glue the right side of his body to the wall to make himself invisible.

“What are you doing, mate, why are you acting so weird?” Liam asks, looking over his shoulder to see what Louis is looking at. “Oh, there’s Harry!” He exclaims with far too much enthusiasm, turning and giving Harry a huge wave.  
  
“Harry, hey! Good morning.” Liam calls. “Come sit with us!”

Louis is going to collapse into the floor. Maybe if he just stays very still and keeps his eyes on his cereal, he’ll just disappear and die.

“Hey, lads,” Harry says as he sits down next to Liam, and nope, no such luck. Louis is, unfortunately, still alive. “Louis,” he greets with a little nod.

“Hi Harry,” Louis replies, eyes still on his cereal, voice low and solemn. “Good morning.”

“Are you okay? Did you sleep alright?” Harry asks, and he sounds so genuinely concerned that Louis looks up at him. His heart gives a little twist at the sincerity he sees in Harry’s eyes.

Louis feels like a massive arse, as Harry is actually a nice guy. Like, he’s really fucking nice. Despite his resolution to stay away from Harry last night, Louis found himself laughing at his jokes, staring at his dimple, paying entirely too much attention to him. He’d managed to stay away from Harry for about six hours, four of which Louis spent napping in his cabin.

He can just be friends with him, Louis reasons. He’s been friends with people he’s had desperate stupid crushes on before, and it hasn’t been easy, but he’s done it. There’s not that many counselors here, Louis won’t be able to avoid Harry for the whole summer, not without people noticing. And Harry’s a sweet guy; it’s not his fault that Louis is already hopelessly attracted to him, had spent most of last night laughing at his dumb jokes. Louis will become friends with him, and then he’ll realize that Harry is a smelly, self-centered, conceited asshole, and his crush will disappear. Or more likely, he’ll become friends with him, spend the whole summer pining after him, and then get over it when he moves home.

He’ll probably never know if Harry’s lips are really as soft as they look, what it would feel like to press him up against the outside of his cabin and kiss him senseless, what it would be like to tumble into bed with him. He’ll never know, and that’ll be Louis’ burden to carry for the summer. He can get over it.

He sighs, and then he gives Harry a genuine smile. “Yeah, I slept alright. How about you?”

Harry returns a dimpled smile of his own, and Louis breathes a little easier. They spend the rest of the breakfast joking with Liam, trading stories from back home, talking about all the things they want to do this summer.

*

Liam’s lessons about discipline come to a fruition later that day when they’re brought into a small group meeting to discuss how they can make sure their campers have the best possible summer. Each session of the meeting is two cabins at a time, and as luck would have it, Louis' group consists of himself and Liam, and then Harry, Niall, and Zayn, the boy who’d called Louis out on not looking like a rugby player at the introductory meeting yesterday.

The three of them are all in the one cabin, because they’re with the twelve year olds, the kids who are probably on their own for the first time for a whole summer, and Simon thinks they need an extra counselor to help them.

“Alright, we’ve grouped your two cabins together because your kids are likely to have similar issues with adjusting to being at camp for a whole summer, whether it’s not being able to talk to mum and dad all the time or having to lose their three hundred day Snapchat streak with their best friend,” Ben says, standing at the front of the group. “Whatever it is, the five of you will be there for them, alright? Now we’ve got a nurse if people are sick and we’ve got actual adults who can deal with this stuff if it’s really important, but we need you all to be the first line of defense.”

He passes out a thick, stapled stack of papers to each of them. “These are the camp rules and regulations. You’ll be expected to know these inside and out by the end of the week. The first campers arrive on Sunday, so we have five days to get you into tip top shape. Let’s get going.”

Ben claps his hands together. “First up, let’s talk about discipline. Any thoughts on discipline strategies for campers who misbehave?”

Liam’s hand shoots straight into the air.

*

“I’m exhausted,” Louis complains four hours later.

“God, me too. I could just fall asleep right here,” Niall agrees, dropping his head onto Louis' shoulder. Niall doesn’t seem to have any qualms about sharing personal space, but instead of being weirded out, Louis finds he doesn’t actually mind. It’s a bit like being at home, kids crawling all over him, a bit like having the little brother he never had growing up.

“D’you think that if I fall into the lake, they’ll let me skip out on the next meeting?” Zayn asks, his feet dangling over the water. Harry’s tall enough that he’s actually got his toes in the water, his grey Nike trainers and socks sitting on the dock next to him.

“Probably not, mate,” Niall answers, lifting his head off Louis' shoulder to look at Zayn. “Think they’d miss you too much.”

“Ah, true,” Zayn says, laughing. “What would they do without their arts and crafts leader?”

“I can do arts and crafts,” Harry announces. They all turn to look at him, the same expression of skepticism written on all four faces. “No, no, I can, I swear. I’m ace at those friendship bracelets. And those plastic braiding things, you know? I’m great at those.”

They all stare at him blankly. “I have…no idea what you’re talking about, mate,” Zayn says slowly.

“You know, those plastic…braiding…things,” Harry tries, gesturing with his hands and giving up when it’s clear that the rest of them have no idea what he’s talking about. “I’ll show you later.”

“Guess you’ll be leading that activity then, Harry,” Zayn huffs. “Mostly just good at painting, myself.”

“What kind of painting?” Liam asks, and then suddenly they’ve launched a conversation about their specific skills and hobbies that lasts until they have to get up for their next meeting.

Louis lays back on the dock - hopefully he won’t get any splinters - and listens to them talk for a while. It’s nice, this little group. He feels like they could be his friends.

*

It turns out that their afternoon meeting takes place at a ropes course. As in, they will be strapping into harnesses and swinging off ropes and jumping off forty-foot platforms into the air. Louis and Zayn are thrilled, Niall’s a little skeptical, and Liam is positively shitting himself.

“I don’t care, I don’t care that it’s supposed to be some kind of bullshit team building exercise,” he cries, spinning in a circle around the little hut they’re all crowded into. “I can’t deal with heights, I’m not doing it.” He sounds truly fearful, in near hysterics.

“Liam, mate, it's okay. It's not that bad, I've done it before. You can have someone push you if you want, makes it a bit less scary,” Louis offers, but that seems to have the opposite effect and just makes Liam scrub at his face with his hands, panic clear on his face.

“Hey, hey,” Harry says softly, wrapping an arm around Liam’s shoulder. “It’s alright, you’re alright. We won’t let them make you do anything you don’t want to do, okay?” He sounds soothing, soft but confident, and Louis might even believe him.

“Okay?” Harry asks again, and Liam nods, wraps his arm around Harry so that they’re hugging. He buries his face into Harry’s shoulder and Louis' heart gives a little lurch as Harry rubs his back in soothing circles.

He looks like he gives really fucking good hugs, is the thing. And Louis himself would love to be on the receiving end of one of them, if he could.

“Why don’t you just come outside and see? Maybe Louis or Zayn will have a go and you can see what you think?” He looks over at Louis, and Louis nods.

“Yeah, yeah of course. I can go first, if you want.” Louis offers quickly. “It’s gonna be okay, Liam, promise.”

“Are you sure?” Liam asks.

“What kind of co-counselor would I be if I lied to you?”

“A really shitty one,” Harry answers, and that gets a shaky laugh out of Liam.

“Alright, here we go,” Louis says, and they go outside to meet their leader.

*

Thirty minutes later, Louis and Niall are standing on the ground, watching as Harry talks to Liam on top of a platform forty feet in the air.

“Harry seems like a good guy,” Niall remarks, and the comment is so out of the blue that Louis wants to ask Niall if he’s crawled inside of his brain and had a poke around. _What do you know?_ He wants to ask. _Am I that obvious?_ He’d laughed at Harry’s jokes, sure, but they all did. And he hadn’t sat next to him in the car for fear that he’d get too close and never let go.

“Yeah, yeah he does.” Louis agrees, and he doesn't have time to worry if he sounds casual enough because then Liam’s jumping off the platform, he's actually zip lining, soaring through the air and Harry’s whooping and hollering and Louis has no idea how Harry convinced Liam to do it but he feels like his own face might split in two from his smile.

*

The next five days pass by in a blur of _wake up, eat breakfast, go to a meeting, learn your way around the camp, eat lunch, plan out activities, go to another meeting, eat dinner, go swimming, hang out at the campfire, fall into bed_. Louis is exhausted. And yet he’s the happiest he’s been in a long while.

It’s nice, is the thing. He spends all his time with Liam, Niall, Zayn, and Harry, the four of them an inseparable group even this early on. That day on the dock was just the beginning of it. They balance each other out so well. Louis has never spent so much time with people without getting sick of them, except for Stan, who he’s known forever. They spend all their working hours together, and most of their free time too. Though in a few hours all of their hours will be considered working hours, as the campers arrive today.

He and Liam have worked out their issues, which mainly stemmed from the fact that Liam is a self-professed control freak who takes things too seriously and Louis is a control freak who takes an incredibly laidback approach to things and has faith that it’ll all work out, for the most part. There may have been a bit of an argument, one that ended with the two of them yelling at each other over how they would handle campers that fought with each other (the irony was not lost on him) and Niall and Harry coming to break it up. Since then they’ve been perfectly pleasant, helping each other with their activity plans and talking to each other long into the night.

“You excited for this?” Louis asks Harry as they leave the dining hall after the last staff-only breakfast to head to the table where they’ll be checking campers in. They’ll be situated in the middle of the football field, with absolutely no shade to speak of, so Harry’s grabbed them each a water bottle.

Harry keeps doing stuff like that, getting an extra snack for Louis when he’s gone to get one for himself, taking two packets of notes when they have a meeting, saving a seat for him when he’s running late to dinner after his footie game with Liam. He doesn’t have to, but he does it anyway, stuff he doesn’t do for the other boys.

Sometimes Louis thinks Harry feels what he himself is feeling, especially in those situations. Surely this crush can’t be one-sided, surely Louis can’t be the only one spending their nightly campfires wondering what it would be like to be cuddled up in a chair with him. Surely he can’t be the only one pining like this.

It’s only gotten worse, is the problem, as he’s gotten to know Harry better. Sure, Louis was attracted to him for his good looks and his smile and the dimple that made Louis want to punch a wall, that’s what he was interested in at the start. But now…Harry is funny, when you get to know him. He’s sweet and he’s genuine and he always gives a special thank you hug to Barbara, the older woman who cooks all their meals.

So it’s really hard to be around Harry when Louis just wants to push him against a wall and snog him senseless, to learn what kind of noises he’d make as Louis nipped at his jaw, his chest, and all over. And yet - being friends with Harry is far, far better than not having him at all. Louis has never laughed so much with one person in his life.

“Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Can’t believe it’s finally here, you know? Feels like we’ve been training for this all week and now they’re all coming, and I’m just so excited for these kids to have the best summer of their lives.”

Louis looks over and smiles at the genuine enthusiasm that’s plain on Harry’s face. “You really love kids, don’t you?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Harry replies, grinning.

And that’s obvious fifteen minutes later, when the first kids arrive.

“Hi!” Harry greets the boy, who can’t be more than thirteen. “Welcome to Camp Timber Lake! I’m Harry, and this is Louis; what’s your name?”

“I’m Andrew Irwin,” the boy says, clinging to his mum’s hand. “Are you from England?”

“I am! Where are you from?”

“I’m from Boston.”

“That’s so cool, I’ve always wanted to go there! Maybe you can tell me all about it at dinner tonight, how’s that sound?”

“That sounds good,” Andrew approves, a bit more animated now.

“Hey, Andrew, you wouldn’t happen to be twelve years old, would you?” Louis says, looking in the binder for his last name. He knows they have to hurry up this conversation because there’s three cars pulling up the path and hundreds more to follow.

“I am!”

“Well, I guess I’m the lucky guy who has the honor of having you in my cabin then,” Harry explains, and Andrew beams. “We’ll be in cabin 16 all summer. I can’t wait!”

Louis directs Andrew and his grateful mum to the cabin where Zayn and Niall are waiting, and then it’s onto the next group.

The best moment of the whole afternoon happens when Harry takes a break to go to the toilet.

“Hi, what are your names?” Louis says.

“I’m Mallory Quinlan,” the first girl answers. She’s all long legs and youthful energy, her dark hair parted into two plaits with red ribbons at the end. She’s in a faded Camp Timber Lake t-shirt; she must be a returning camper.

“And I’m Sara Carlton,” her friend says. She’s shorter, blonde, dressed in faded denim cutoffs and a matching t-shirt. “We’re both fifteen and this is our third time here. Who are _you_?” She asks, tone laced with suspicion.

“I’m Louis Tomlinson. We’re so glad you came back!”

“Hi! Are you excited?” Harry asks in his slow drawl as he comes back and takes his seat next to Louis, a red backwards baseball cap atop his head. His curls are peeking out and it makes him look both younger and very, very handsome. Louis has to suppress a laugh as Sara and Mallory both flush absolutely bright red.

Sara looks at the ground and Mallory just nods. Louis wants to give them a hug; the first time he’d seen Harry, he felt much the same way. Still does, really.

Louis sends them on their way with their cabin info - _“_ We’ve been here before, we know where cabin 21 is!” - and Harry turns to him immediately. “What did I do wrong? Did I scare them?”

“Think they’ve got a bit of a crush on you, Hazza,” Louis teases, pinching his cheek.

Harry’s face turns blank for a second, and then he’s back to his bright eyed self. “Oh. Well, someone’s gonna have to break it to them that you have a better shot with me than they do,” Harry jokes.

Louis tenses, feels his whole body go still. When he speaks, his voice is shaky. “Except…except for the rule about no relationships between counselors.”

“Right.” Harry says, voice flat. Louis looks over at him and catches him staring, and they lock eyes for a moment. Louis has that thought again, another _‘maybe this isn’t just me_ ’ thought. Surely Harry must be feeling something too, surely this is a shared thing.

A car door slams, a girl squeals, and the moment is broken.

Back to work.

*

“Okay, Molly, I’m gonna need you to shoot a little further to the left there if you want to score a goal,” Louis calls four days later.

“Louis, I’m _trying_!” She whines. “I’m tired.”

“Molly, hurry up!” One of the boys from Louis' cabin, Dan, yells. “You’re wasting our time!”

Molly crosses her arms defiantly and pouts, her right foot resting on the ball.

“Molly, please,” Louis begs, as patiently as he can, “everyone else is waiting for you to score so that they can have a turn.”

“Molly, come on!” Amber yells. “Get a move on!”

“This is why we shouldn’t let girls play,” Dan shouts. “They suck!”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up!” Louis yells, blowing his whistle.

“Dan, why would you say that?” Harry says from behind him. _Harry_. Louis turns around and Harry’s standing there, looking upset. “What do you mean, girls suck?”

“Girls suck at soccer, that’s what I mean.” Louis can hear the ‘ _duh_ ’ that’s implicit in his statement. The other kids are just watching, waiting to see what happens. Molly still looks defiant, angry, even in the presence of Harry, who all the girls seem to go soft around.

“Lou, let me borrow your whistle.” Louis pulls the lanyard off his neck and tosses it to Harry, who catches it easily.

He blows it once, twice, three times. “Alright, all of you, get in a circle. Dan, that means you too.”

Louis has never heard him sound so strict, even when he and Louis caught two of the fifteen year olds kissing against a tree on the second day of camp. God, was that really only two days ago? Time seems to have no meaning here.

“Okay, listen up. There is absolutely no reason that girls can’t play football - sorry, soccer - as well as boys can, if not better. Do you remember that the US women’s national team won the World Cup last summer? And your men’s team didn’t even make it to the third round.”

Dan opens his mouth, then shuts it again as Harry continues. “Girls can play better than boys. I bet Avery and Amber and Molly could play against Louis and I and beat us in three minutes flat.”

It’s kinda hot, Louis realizes, watching Harry educate a bunch of young teenagers about equality, watch him standing there in black running shorts and a t-shirt that is a bit more see-through than is probably appropriate. Louis can see his tattoos in perfect detail through it, for God’s sake. But then, he already knows far too much about those tattoos, he saw them up close when they had to take their swim test last week. He shouldn’t still be thinking about them, but he is.

“Let’s see it, then,” Dan huffs, face angry and red.

“We don’t have time for that, not when it’s time for you all to go swimming. But tomorrow, when you’re all back here playing soccer again, I don’t want Louis to hear a single word about how girls can’t play, or boys are better than girls. Because there is no difference. You hear me? Absolutely no difference. Okay, scoot, off to the lake you go!”

He blows the whistle again for good measure, and then they all run off, Dan trudging at the back of the pack.

Harry falls in step beside Louis, the two of them walking toward the lake.

“How did you - you didn’t have to do that,” Louis begins, looking up at him.

“I kinda did. I mean…” he trails off, looking deep in thought. It’s one of Louis' favorite things about Harry, actually; the way he’ll stop and think of the best way to phrase what he’s trying to say, at least when it’s something he really cares about.

“I just didn’t want Molly to think she’s rubbish at football just because she’s a girl. There’s enough of that nonsense in the world, we don’t need to be encouraging boys like Dan to continue to act like that.”

“Between you and me, Dan is a little shit, if we’re being honest,” Louis says, and Harry laughs.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“Needed someone to put him in his place. But, you know that if you hadn’t shown up I would’ve said something, right? I wouldn’t have just let him spew his bullshit like that. I have four sisters, I know that girls can play football just as well as lads can.”

“Right, right, I know. It’s just that when I came by to tell you all it was time for them to go swimming, I heard him saying all that and I just got so _mad_ , you know? Like genuinely angry. Molly’s a sweet girl, but she’s a bit emotionally fragile; she doesn’t need people telling her she can’t do things.” They’re by the lake now, and the kids are splashing around as they jump off the diving board one by one.

Louis nods. “Well, thanks for stepping in.”

“Anytime, Lou,” Harry replies. The nickname makes Louis' heart flip a little bit. They stand there for a minute looking over the lake, and then as Harry turns around to leave, his hand brushes Louis', his pinky dragging on the back of Louis' hand. It’s a split second, just a moment, but Louis feels the ghost of it for the rest of the day.

*

“Zayn Malik, I swear to God if you hit me with that water balloon I will make sure you’re on dinner clean up duty for a month!”

Louis looks on as Liam gets hit with a water balloon anyway, the balloon exploding as it makes contact which his shoulder, dousing his t-shirt. It’s not the first time and it certainly won’t be the last, especially as Hailey, one of Eleanor’s campers, is creeping up behind Liam to drop a balloon down his shirt.

Louis is laughing at Liam’s predicament and the ensuing splash, so he doesn’t notice that Niall and a little girl named Amber have teamed up to attack him from behind until Niall’s tackling him, pinning his arms above his head and using his knee to gently hold him to the ground. There’s nothing violent about it, but Louis tries to free himself all the same, fighting against Niall’s hold as Niall pushes back. Amber is pelting water balloons at him, one, two, three, in quick succession.

“Stop it, stop it!” Louis screams, and in return he just gets a well-placed shot to the crotch from William, one of the kids in his cabin. Well, good job he wore swimming trunks for this. A water fight wasn’t exactly what they’d planned to do for their cabin time, but Niall had suggested it and one of the kids overheard and things took a turn from there.

“William, you’re supposed to be on my side!” Louis yells, taking advantage of Niall’s temporary distraction to sit up. “I know where you sleep!” William’s running away, and Louis leaps to his feet and grabs two water balloons from the basket the edge of the field. He chases after William, who’s darting in and out around campers, most of whom are standing and watching the scene.

“Harry, Harry, help me!” William yells, and Harry tuns around just in time to catch William barrelling into him. He sees Louis running toward them and he steps in front of William, shielding him with his body.

“Don’t you dare, Tomlinson. You want to get him, you’ll have to get me too.” He sounds menacing, but Louis can see that he’s trying not to laugh. William, gripping onto Harry’s shirt at his waist, peers out from behind him to say, “Yeah, and we all know you won’t want to soak your best friend!”

Louis doesn’t waste time considering the implication of the words ‘your best friend’ because he chooses that moment to throw his first balloon at Harry’s hip, where it makes contact and explodes, splashing both of them.

“You know,” Harry begins, glaring in a way that Louis thinks he’s supposed to find scary. “I was going to protect you. But now, this is war!”

Louis reacts by throwing the second balloon right at his shoulder. The kids around them cheer, and Louis has a split second of forethought to start running before Harry chases after him.

There’s an ensuing scuffle, and Louis can’t quite make sense of it all, but by the time it’s over, he’s poured an entire bottle of water over Harry’s head, both of their t-shirts are soaked through, and they’re laying on the ground at the bottom of a puppy pile full of kids.

“Alright, alright! Up, up, up!” Liam calls to the campers. “Let them breathe, let them up!”

Louis can hear Niall trying to order them to do the same, but he and Zayn are laughing too hard to actually do anything about it.

One by one, the kids reluctantly stand up, and then it’s just Louis and Harry lying there side by side. “Up you get, Curly,” Louis orders as he gets to his feet. He offers his hand to Harry to pull himself up, and - _holy shit_. Harry’s shirt is so wet and so see through that he might as well not be wearing one at all, with the way Louis can see every line of his abs.

“Thanks,” Harry says softly, his hand still in Louis'. Louis can feel the way his eyes drag up his face, feels Harry’s gaze like a flame licking over his neck, his cheek, his lips. Louis stares right back.

“Anytime,” Louis returns after a minute, and then a kid’s jumping on Harry’s back and the moment is broken.

“Harry, Harry, come on! I need you to help me get George with a water balloon, please!”

Harry gives Louis an apologetic look, but Louis nods, tells him to go ahead.

“Alright Noah, let’s go.”

Louis watches them go, seeing Harry carrying Noah on his back while the boy encourages him to go faster. He can’t hold back his smile when Harry starts making random animal noises, when he gets a bunch of normal self conscious twelve and thirteen year olds to do the same thing.

“You’re hopeless, mate.” Niall begins from behind him, and Louis turns around to see him grinning.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You and Harry.”

“What about me and Harry?”

“Whatever’s going on between the two of you. Neither of you are subtle, mate.”

“But - but there’s nothing going on between us, Niall.”

“Yeah, okay, keep tellin’ yourselves that. I see the way you look at him and the way he looks back. The two of you will be engaged by the end of the summer,” Niall rambles, and Louis doesn’t like the knowing smirk on his face.

“Oh, piss off, Niall.”

*

Louis is still thinking about Niall’s words later that evening as he sits by the lake during his free hour between leading sports practice (football again today) and dinner. He’s showered, combed his wet hair, and put on a pair of khaki shorts and a Doncaster Rovers t-shirt.

_I see the way he looks at you._

So it isn’t just in Louis' head then, he hasn’t been imagining it. Harry does look at him differently than he looks at the other boys.

Louis has been so sure that it’s all in his head, that he’s the only one with a dumb crush, and now - maybe it’s not true. Maybe Harry is genuinely interested in him.

Still, they can’t do anything about it. Not with the threat of losing their jobs and having to pay a fine for getting kicked out of camp early. It doesn’t change anything.

He sighs then, steeples his hands below his chin as his feet dangle in the water. Louis sits like that for a few minutes, deep in thought, before there’s a clearing of a throat behind him.

“Mind if I join you?” It’s Harry. Of course it is.

“Yeah, sure. No problem,” Louis says quickly, trying to act like he hasn’t been thinking about Harry himself for the past half hour.

“You okay?” Harry asks as he settles down next to Louis, his bare feet creating ripples in the lake when they hit the water. Louis watches it for a moment, the ripples spiraling and spiraling.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” Louis looks up at Harry and finds a bright smile on his face. “What’s up?”

“Not much, just thought I’d come say hi,” he replies, but Louis can sense there’s more that he wants to say.

“Hi,” Louis says then. They're both quiet for a minute, the only sound Harry’s feet splashing the water in no real pattern.

“I just got off the phone with my mum,” Harry begins with a heavy sigh. Louis looks over at Harry, but he’s got his face down. “She's got a new boyfriend.”

“That’s - that’s good, right?”

Harry’s head shoots up then, eyes locking with Louis', and his face breaks for a minute, betraying his affected nonchalance.

“I don't know,” he cries. “I don't know if it's good or bad and I haven't met him and I hate that she’s only chosen to tell me now when I'm 3,000 miles away. I hate that she didn’t tell me when she started seeing him, that I’m only finding out now.”

He looks back down at the water, his feet still.

“Haz,” Louis starts gently as he lays a hand on Harry’s shoulder, his upper body twisted to face him properly. “What are you worried about?”

“I don't know.” Harry sighs, a little calmer. “Just worried he’ll be an arsehole, I guess. Hard to know without meeting him.”

“What did she say about him?”

A tear rolls down Harry’s cheek, and Louis has to fight the urge to wipe it away. When he answers, his voice is raspy.

“She said - she said he's lovely. He's taking her to Spain next month on a holiday. She sounded really happy, it all sounded really genuine, she said he does something with computers, she said he wants to meet me when I get home.”

He wipes at his eyes furiously. Louis doesn't say anything, waits for him to speak again, senses there's more to it. He’s tempted to say ‘ _So what’s the problem?’._ But he knows from experience it’s more complicated than that.

“My mum’s been single for a long time. And it’s been just the three of us, me and Gems and mum, and now I guess this new guy. I don’t know. She was just so hurt after my dad…I don’t want it to happen again.”

“Hey, hey,” Louis says, scooching closer to Harry to wrap his arm around him. “It’s gonna be okay, I promise.”  
  
Harry just looks up at him, makes a skeptical face. “How do you _know_ though? How do you know that?”

“I mean, I guess I don’t,” Louis acquiesces. “Not for sure. But like, okay, look,” he tries with a sigh. “My mum got remarried a couple years ago, and now she’s happier than she’s ever been. It was a long road to get there, she had a lot of heartbreak, my dad was a major arsehole and then she had a big falling out with my step dad, but…I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I just think she would tell you it was worth it, to be as happy as she is now.”

Harry tilts his head up to look at him. “You think so?”

“Yeah, I do.” Louis says with a nod. “I just think, just give him a chance. You never know.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

He lays his head on Louis' shoulder then, and Louis freezes for a second before he leans into the contact.

“Thanks, Lou.” He says in a soft, quiet voice, and there’s a split second where Louis is desperately tempted to kiss him.

He doesn’t.

*

“What’s the deal with you and Harry?” Liam asks that night as they’re sitting on the porch of their cabin, waiting for the kids to finish washing up for bed.

“What d’you mean?” Louis replies, making a check mark next to _Delatore, Andrew_ as the boy enters the cabin.  
  
“That whole thing during the water fight, your romantic moment out by the lake. That whole thing.”

“You - you saw us?” Louis sputters quickly, too quickly. Fuck, now he sounds guilty as hell and nothing’s even happened. Liam smirks at him. “I mean, there’s nothing going on between us. Really.”

“Yeah, sure, okay. I don’t believe you. Not with the way you two are always making heart eyes at each other whenever we’re together.”

“Payno, I’m serious. Nothing’s happened.”

“Louis, he had his head on your shoulder down by the lake! At sunset! I know what I saw.” He sounds so sincere, so certain, that Louis has to laugh. Trust Liam to see that as a romantic moment.

“He’s having a hard time with some stuff at home, he just wanted to tell someone, wanted some advice! I swear, nothing has happened.”

“Okay, okay,” Liam says, palms up in surrender. “But like, if something _were_ to happen, I don’t think any of us would be surprised,” he adds conspiratorially.

At Louis' confused look, he continues, “Just like, we’ve all noticed. Me and the lads. It’s like you’re proper in love with each other.”

“Oh, shove off, Liam,” Louis huffs, pushing the clipboard to Liam’s chest before getting to his feet and storming into the cabin.

*

They take all the campers to an amusement park that weekend, a fun off-site excursion that Simon lauded as one of the ‘most exciting weekends of the summer’. Louis isn’t quite sure it lives up to that name, but his campers seem to be having a good time, so he supposes that’s the point.

“Dan, stop throwing bits of cheese at Amber!” Eleanor admonishes, and Louis whips around from his spot next to Liam to look over at Dan. The brat from his cabin is indeed peeling bits off his string cheese and throwing them at Amber, who’s sitting a bench away. In the ten days or so since the football incident, Dan has been markedly quieter, more polite. Clearly Harry’s words had gotten through to him somehow. At least, until today.

He and Liam lock eyes and Liam groans. “I’ll deal with him,” he says, and Louis flashes him a grateful smile. It hasn’t been an easy road for the two of them over the past three weeks, but Louis is proud of how they’ve worked things out. They’re a good team now: Louis has made Liam let his guard down to have a little more fun (case in point: the water fight) and Liam has knocked a bit of sense into Liam and forced him to concede that yeah, maybe some discipline would be good for the kids.

“Okay, guys, time to finish up your lunches so that we can get back out there and check out those roller coasters!” Louis calls, and there’s an equal mix of cheers and groans.

“Louis, what if we don’t like roller coasters?” A girl named Rebecca calls, her hand raised high in the air. She’s one of the girls in Eleanor and Sophia’s cabin, and from his encounters with her, she’s incredibly precocious and a little bossy.  

“Who doesn’t like roller coasters? That’s dumb,” William announces, and Louis steadies himself, ready for the fight he knows is coming.

“My sister said that a man _died_ on one last year. He fell out of his chair from the sky and hit the ground and _died_. So me. That’s who doesn’t like roller coasters. Me.” Rebecca retorts, and then, just as Louis knew would happen, they start yelling at each other and the rest of the group joins in too.

Well, no one promised that this job would be easy, he reasons.

“Sometimes I think we were fuckin’ insane to sign up for this,” he confides to Liam when he comes back to his side, speaking into his ear over the noise of the argument.

“Louis! Language!” Liam chastises with a frown, and then he smiles. “Yeah, we were pretty fuckin’ mad.”

*

It was all Niall’s idea. One hundred percent entirely his idea. That’s what he’ll remember if this whole night goes to shit and they get in trouble, Louis tells himself as he finishes his second pint. They’ve been at a bar for about an hour, and so far, so good. Nothing’s gone wrong. And they’re allowed to be here, it’s their night off; they’re finally getting one all together after having worked for three weeks straight.

“Should I get us another round?” Louis asks as he stands up from his chair. “Everyone want one?”

They all nod, and Zayn offers to come along for help.

Louis orders five pints and the bartender is on the second one when Zayn speaks. “So Harry seems to be having a good time,” Zayn begins casually, and they both look over to the table, where Harry bursts into a laugh at whatever Niall’s just said. He has such a nice laugh, one that takes over his whole body when he really gets into it.

“Yeah, I mean…first American pub, s’pose it’s a big deal,” Louis says. “Bit mad though, the laws here. Like, real strict, huh?”

“Thought they weren’t even going to let us in the door,” Zayn admits, “was nervous they’d take my passport.”

At the mention of a passport, Louis pats his back pocket and yes, thank God, his own is still there.

“But I mean, he seems happy with _you_ ,” Zayn continues, and Louis groans.

“God, not you too.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Niall and Liam, the two of them are like, obsessed with this idea they have that me and Harry are in love, or something.”

“I mean, aren't you?”

“No!” Louis protests. “We’re just friends.”

“Maybe you're just friends now, but I can see the way you two are eye-fucking each other from across the table. Don't deny it, because we all know it's happening.”

Louis wants to deny it. But he can't deny it, can't help but remember the way after he’d finished his first drink Harry’s foot had pressed against Louis' ankle, how when Louis had pulled away, thinking it was an accident, Harry’s foot had chased the movement. Zayn doesn't even know about that. What he’s referring to is the way Louis' eyes have been glued to Harry’s face all night, the way he feels hot, flushed, wanted. He hasn't been with anyone in ages and he’s been surrounded by a Harry in various states of undress over the past three weeks; Zayn can't really blame him for feeling a little hot.

“Just go for it, mate. I know he's into you,” Zayn advises. “I can tell.”

Louis thinks about it, thinks if there was anyone he would go to for advice about Harry it would definitely be Zayn. Because Zayn’s a sensitive kind of guy, all in tune with her emotions and that shit. Must be all the painting he does.

“I mean, is it even worth it? All we could be is just a thing for the summer, yeah? I don't get the feeling Harry’s that kind of bloke,” Louis says, paying the bartender as he comes back with the drinks. He turns to fit his hip against the bar so that he’s facing Zayn properly. “I mean, who knows. Maybe we’d fall in love and have twelve babies like Niall predicted. Or more likely, we’d fuck out of desperation a couple times and it wouldn't be worth it. I'm a mess, Zayn, I can't bring that on him.”

“Lou, it's okay to let yourself be happy, you know? I see the way he makes you laugh. It's okay to give it a shot. He’s not gonna say no,” Zayn encourages, and it does make Louis feel better, it _does_. Because he and Harry, the last few days especially, it's like their closeness has increased, the heat Louis feels when Harry looks at him so much hotter now. But it also makes Louis feel a bit worse because they can't do anything, not without breaking every rule in the book.

“We can’t, Zayn,” Louis says, his voice flat. “It’s against the rules. Simon will kill us and we’ll lose our jobs. I'll just have to keep it in my pants.” He picks up the tray of three pints, leaving the other two for Zayn, and starts to head back to the table.

“I haven't known you long, Louis, but you've never seemed like someone who follows the rules if you didn't want to,” Zayn calls, and Louis can't say anything else because then they're back at the table.

*

There’s only four seats in the cab. Niall and Zayn have already climbed in when they realize this, and Liam, Louis and Harry are left standing on the pavement in the warm summer night, debating what they should do between the three of them.

“Right, well, we’ll all just squish in,” Harry figures, the alcohol making his voice slow and syrupy, more so than usual. “It’s not that far back to camp.”

“No can do, mate,” the driver interjects again, looking more annoyed by the minute. “Might be the way they do things where you’re from, but we have laws against that sorta thing here.”

Liam’s got a hand on the car door and uncertainty is written all over his face.

“Why don't you three go,” Harry suggests then, “and me ‘n Lou will get the next one.”

“Afraid I’m the only one of me there is,” the driver interrupts. “Not much need for cabs in a small town like this.”

“We can walk,” Louis announces suddenly, and five pairs of eyes turn to look at him. “What? It’s not that far, is it? Two miles, two and a half?” The driver nods. “Right, so, we can start walking, and then if you catch up to us, you can bring us back.”

“Louis, that’s a bit mad. Why don’t we all walk together then? Safety in numbers, and all that,” Liam replies quickly, brows furrowed.

“I think Harold here can keep me quite safe,” Louis says, clapping his hand on Harry’s back. “Plus, we’ve kept this poor man waiting here long enough, wouldn’t want to deprive him of a few bob on top of all that. Now, in you get, Liam, before I have to push you in myself.”

Liam does as he’s told, climbing into the cab and nearly falling on top of Zayn, who’s quite plastered himself, and Louis shuts the car door behind him with a loud slam.

“So,” Harry starts after a moment once the car has driven away and it’s just the two of them standing outside the bar, now closed. “Just you and me.”

“Just you and me, Curly,” Louis nods, and when he looks up into Harry’s eyes he’s got this dopey look on his face, a little bit drunk and a little bit turned on, and Louis doesn’t think he’s ever liked someone’s face so much. He wants to kiss him. But then, he always does.

“So, are you going to walk me home, young Harold, or are we going to stand here all night?”

“Well, let’s go, Mr. Tomlinson,” Harry answers, and he loops his arm through Louis' as they start the long walk home.

*

They’ve sobered up by the time they get close to camp, thanks to the warm summer air and a riveting game of ‘Never Have I Ever,’ which has forced Harry to reveal that he’s never gone skinny dipping and Louis to confess that he’s only ever had two proper boyfriends in his life.

“Beats mine,” Harry admits. “I’ve never had any. Nothing that counted, anyway.”

“But you - you’re so…so _you_. How can that be?” Louis asks. “You’re so special. Anyone would be lucky to have you.”

“Dunno. But you say that about everyone, Lou, so I think your judgements are a bit biased.”

“No, no, Harry, listen to me,” Louis protests softly, stopping in the middle of the grass pathway that would lead them to camp and turning to look at Harry, trying his very best to sound sincere. “You’re something special. I promise.”

Harry flushes bright red, a blush that Louis knew wasn’t from the alcohol, and he thinks, _Me. I did that to him. That was me._ So Louis is a bit cocky about it. Sue him.

“Thanks, Lou,” Harry says after a moment, voice soft. “Thanks.”

A few minutes of walking later and they’re back home.

“So, we’re back at camp,” Louis sighs, and he pauses by the entranceway, that same sign he’d seen when he arrived all those weeks ago. Camp Timber Lake.

“Back at camp,” Harry confirms, and then there’s a moment of perfect silence, a split second where they both turn to each other, staring unabashedly and Louis knows exactly what’s going to happen. He just. _Knows_.

Harry surges toward him, crossing the foot between them in an instant and cupping Louis' cheeks between his hands. Louis lifts up and presses his lips against Harry’s, and Harry opens his mouth almost immediately. Louis groans into it, into the warmth of it, and it’s everything he’s wanted for weeks now, since that first day Harry came tripping into the dining hall. Harry’s tongue brushes his and it feels so good and Louis just wants to be closer, closer, closer. He pulls himself into Harry, wraps his arms around to grab at Harry’s waist. It’s brand new but it feels so familiar, so comforting, feels like he could do this for the rest of his - oh shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

He pushes Harry away with two hands to the chest, not pushing hard but pushing hard enough. “Haz, Harry…we can’t do this,” he gets out in between pants of breath. “We - we can’t.”

“Lou - what’s wrong?” Harry asks, and he looks positively crestfallen, and _oh shit_ , Louis was the one to put that look on his face, Louis is the one crushing him right now. “Did you not want - have I been reading this whole thing wrong?” He takes another step back, eyes glued to the ground.

“Haz, no,” Louis tries, voice earnest. He dares to take a step forward (he feels a bit like he’s approaching a startled baby deer) and when Harry doesn’t back away, he takes Harry’s hands in his own, swinging their arms gently between them. “Look at me.”

“Honestly, Haz…I like you. So much. But we can’t do anything about it, not with our jobs. So this,” Louis gestures between them, “this was a mistake. I don’t regret it, but it never should have happened. It _can’t_ happen,” Louis says emphatically.

“I’m sorry,” Harry replies softly, and he looks dreadful. God, leave it to Harry to be apologizing for something that he didn’t do. Because it’s Louis' fault really, what with the games of footsie he kept initiating and the long, heated looks they kept exchanging.

“I wish we could, Haz,” Louis answers. “But we can’t.”

Harry nods, purses his lips, looks at the ground again. The look on his face makes Louis feel like he just killed Harry’s favorite cat. “I get it, I know we can’t. I don’t know what I was thinking. But I get it.”

They walk back to the cabin in silence, and when they get to Harry’s door, Harry just raises a hand in goodbye and says, “Night, Lou.”

Louis sits outside his cabin and holds his head in his hands, feeling sorry for himself for a solid ten minutes before going in to bed.

*

It’s awkward between him and Harry the next morning at breakfast, and he knows the others can feel it too. He and Harry are supposed to lead the morning meeting after they all eat, and he’s dreading it.

“What happened between you and Harry last night?” Niall demands. “Did the two of you finally get together? You were gone for _ages_ , Harry’s hair was all messed up when he came in. Did the two of you finally get yourselves sorted?”

“No, Niall,” Louis responds, and his heart twists sharply at the memory of Harry, sad and dejected as he walked into his cabin not even eight hours ago. “We didn’t.”

Niall looks like he wants to say more, is about to press for more information, and then luckily Louis is saved by Liam’s arrival.

“Doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, mate,” Niall murmurs, before getting up and going back to his table with his campers. Harry’s there, of course, but his back is to Louis.

“Talk about what?” Liam wonders, and Louis' response is to stab his spoon into his yogurt and scoop some out. He shoves it into his mouth and then he’s saved from having to speak for a few blissful seconds. And the stupid yogurt, Harry got him into the stuff the day he dared Louis to try it, and Louis had actually _liked_ it. He’d been trying increasingly ridiculous combinations of the stuff over the past few days, different flavors with all kinds of fruits and granolas, combinations that made Harry laugh and encourage him to keep trying.

Louis isn’t mad at Harry, exactly. How could he be, not when he's already half in love with him. He just feels proper awkward, feels like he’s fucked up this whole thing before it really had a chance to begin.

Objectively, he knows that it's not that big of a deal. He's sure Harry's feeling the same bits of awkwardness, but he's also sure that Harry gets it. Harry wants to do well at this job; he loves those kids like they're his own. Surely they can talk about it at the end of the summer and if they're still both interested, they can exchange numbers when they get back to England. Maybe.

God, he'd thought he was having a hard time with his feelings before they'd kissed. But now Louis knows what Harry’s lips taste like, and there's no recovering from a discovery like that.

*

They spend about a half a day circling around each other, avoiding each other, before Harry must realize they're being complete bloody idiots and comes to talk to him on the football pitch just as he’s dismissing the kids to their next activity. Louis wants to feel proud that he wasn't the one to break first, but the reality is that once he sent his kids off, he was going to be heading right for Harry’s classroom.

“Hey Lou,” Harry says in greeting, his smile more dimmed than usual. Louis feels comforted by the nickname; it means it hasn’t all gone to shit.

“Harry,” Louis breathes. “Hi.”

“I just wanted to say I'm sorry. Sorry for like, leading you on.”

“Harry, you didn't. That couldn't be further that's the truth,” Louis cuts in, stopping Harry before he can feel sorry for himself. “I think we’ve both been…interested. Pushing the boundaries a bit. Flirting, and joking, and staring at each other a lot. And then last night, the alcohol, and the whole being alone thing…” he trails off, and Harry jumps in.

“Yeah. I just…I want us to stay friends, alright? Can we not let this make things awkward between us? Because it was awkward enough this morning when we had to lead the morning meeting. I don’t want it to be like that all summer.” Louis nods.

“Maybe we can just go back to how it was? Like I’ve been trying to hide my feelings for you since the day we met, and it’s not the easiest,” Harry continues, “but it’s doable. It keeps us out of trouble. And maybe at the end of the summer, if you’re still interested -”

“ _When_ I’m still interested,” Louis interrupts, and that makes Harry blush.

“Alright, _when_ you’re still interested, maybe we can do something about it then. Does that work?”

“That works,” Louis smiles. “Don’t think I could stop being friends with you if I tried. Like you too much.”

“It’s mutual.”

*

Things are both easier and harder in the following week. There’s a lot of lingering glances and they try to be a little less touchy feely. But Harry still sits next to him whenever he can at lunch, still makes him laugh harder than anyone else at camp, still gives him weird feelings he’s never had reason to put a name to before. It’s a little bit like before, except now he knows what Harry feels like pressed against him, and he’s not likely to forget that anytime soon. But he’s managing.

Harry’s been consumed with planning the Fourth of July festivities, which, from what Louis can tell, involves a lot of popsicles, singing, fireworks, and a very complicated scavenger hunt. Liam’s been busy planning the musical program, approaching the task with his usual ‘all-in’ dedication. Zayn’s spent most of his activity time making posters with his kids, decorations for the parade and the sing-along. He and Liam have spent a lot of time on the front porch of Liam and Louis' cabin, coordinating the show. And Niall - well, they won’t be speaking any other languages on the Fourth of July, so his contribution has been to poke fun at Liam and Zayn until one day the two of them had snapped and Niall had come running to Louis and Harry for safety.

It’s a bit mad, and there’s a lot of planning that’s gone into it, but Louis is excited for his first proper American Fourth of July, just five days away.

*

Louis counts down from ten in his head, and when he reaches one, he looks over at Harry and they both nod, making a run for it. They’re playing Capture the Flag, and they spent a whole hour this morning with their campers strategizing how they could win this. Now it’s time to put it into motion.

“Larry! Larry! Larry!” the kids chant. Louis is running to the end of the field, and he can sense that Harry’s hot on his heels. “Larry! Larry! Larry!” they keep yelling as Louis gets closer to them, and then suddenly he’s tagging one of them and Harry’s tagging another and they’re both freed from jail.

“Get the flag!” He yells to Harry, and just like they’d strategized, Louis goes one way and Harry goes another. Louis doesn’t look back, just turns and runs toward safe territory, back to his own side. Moments later, Harry’s distracted Niall and Eleanor, somehow, and he’s got the flag in his possession.

“Harry, run!” They’re all screaming on his side, and the moment that Harry crosses back into safe territory, they erupt into cheers. That’s it, they’ve won. Team Larry is victorious. Harry falls to the ground in a show of mock exhaustion, and the kids all tumble on top of him, raucous in their celebrations.

Two days ago, Louis hadn’t even _heard_ of Capture the Flag, and now he’s a champion. He lets the kids jump on top of him for a few minutes, recognizing that here at camp, a group of fourteen year olds can be reduced to acting like seven year olds just at the mention of a simple game. They were ridiculously competitive when they wanted to be, and winning was the ultimate goal, no matter how much the counselors tried to insist otherwise. And the Larry thing, that was the brainchild of one of the girls from Eleanor’s cabin who’d insisted their team name be a portmanteau of the team captains. It had quite literally never occurred to him to try this, but apparently the kids had spent some time talking about it, insisting that the best combination of their names was Larry Stylinson. Why they had planned this beforehand, Louis had absolutely no idea.

“Why would we ever need to combine our names?” Louis had asked, and the answer he’d been given was enough to make him and Harry both cough very sharply as they turned away from each other.

“If you get married, obviously.”

*

“Hey, Haz, are you ready for lunch?” Louis asks as he strolls into Cabin 16 two days later, stomach rumbling. He’s just come from talking Liam out of a freakout over some fifteen year olds who aren’t behaving properly during his music rehearsals for the Fourth of July program, which is just two days away. Liam was in a tizzy, concerned that they were going to ruin the entire show, but he seemed a bit better by the time Louis had left him, less likely to throw himself into the lake than he had fifteen minutes before.

“Lou, hi,” Harry greets, and the boy next to him flinches, pulling away and hiding his hands under the table. “What’s up?”

There’s a group of kids around him, a few of his campers who must not have activities at this time.

“Just painting -” Harry starts, and the boy next to him gives him a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Chris, ouch, no!”

Louis gives him a sympathetic smile; that looked like it hurt. The rest of the boys look guilty and Louis notices they’ve all got their hands under the table. They're hiding something, and for his part, Harry’s wearing a bemused smile. It's then that Louis notices the two bottles of red nail polish on the table and, like a gear moving into place in his head, it clicks.

He takes a seat next to one of the boys, and looks at Harry, asking for permission. It's a sign of Harry’s trust in him that he doesn't know what he's asking but nods anyway.

“You know,” Louis starts, keeping his tone as light as possible, “when I was younger my sisters used to paint my nails.”

“Really?” Chris asks, incredulous, and then he shrinks down again, as if catching himself. As if he thinks he isn't supposed to find that cool.

“Oh yeah,” Louis answers, and he feels Harry watching him with a fond smile more than he sees it. “All the time.”

“It's not weird then?” Chris asks, sounding a bit vulnerable. “Like you don't think people will make fun of me for it? I mean - like, if I ever did it.”

“I don't,” Louis replies honestly.

“Told you,” Harry teases, poking Chris in the side.

One by one, the four boys around the table lift their hands from their laps, and Louis can see that each of them has got an index finger that's been painted bright red.

“Who’s gonna do me?” Louis asks then.

“Really?” Harry asks, the hint of a smile appearing on his face.

“Yeah, why not?” Louis shrugs, as he’s not particularly adverse to the idea. The smile that Harry gives him, one that reaches all the way to his eyes, is worth it.

*

“I think we’d better head back now,” Sophia says, looking up at the sky. “Looks like it’s gonna rain any minute now, and it’ll take us twenty minutes or so to get back to the camp.”

It’s the third of July, and Louis is thankful that the weather forecast for tomorrow shows only sun. They’ve all worked so hard on planning the Fourth of July festivities for all the kids, and he’d be so sad if they were rained out. So if he has to deal with the rain, he’d rather it be today.

“Alright, kids, pack it up! Put your rubbish in the bin please,” Louis calls as he stands up from his picnic table. They’re on a little island that’s in the middle of the lake, and he, Harry and Sophia have twenty kids that they need to get back before the storm hits. They’d known there was the possibility of impending rain, but the kids whined and begged to go anyway; going to the island was a camp tradition that each group only got to do twice a summer, and they didn’t want to miss their chance.

The island is small, with a dilapidated hut in the center and picnic tables all around it. It’s a twenty minute paddle from camp, and it’s been a Camp Timber Lake tradition for kids to get to go hang out there. Louis isn’t totally sure why; the hut doesn’t have running water and serves almost no purpose, but some of the kids had spent all day playing house in there. They’ve spent much of the day swimming and paddling around, and Louis will be thankful when they’re all back safely at camp.

There’s a chorus of  “ _Louis, no! Do we have to?”_ that follows, but for the most part the kids start to do what they’re told, cleaning up after themselves. There’s always one, though, and this time it’s Sara who chooses to be snarky.

“What’s a rubbish bin?” She asks with a smirk. “Don’t you mean a _trash can_ , Louis?” The kids are always making fun of him for his accent, but he doesn’t know why they don’t make fun of Harry or Niall or any of the others. Probably because Harry sounds posh, very properly English and Niall is Irish and therefore universally liked, really. Louis responds by rolling his eyes and sticking out his tongue at her, and finally she gets up and throws her things away.

A few minutes later as they’re all paddling back to camp, the storm clouds are growing darker ahead of them by the minute. Louis has somehow ended up in a canoe with Sara and Mallory, and the two of them are whispering about how cute Harry is, like they think Louis can’t hear them or something. He’s tempted to tell them to stop, but he’ll probably end up agreeing with them, giving them a long list of all of his cutest features, or worse, brag about how he’s kissed him.

He listens to their chatter about how Harry’s got _the most beautiful mouth I’ve ever seen_ and _no but have you SEEN those arms?_ and _if I could just take him on ONE date he’d see that he should totally fall in love with me_ and _But Mrs. Sara Styles has such a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?_ Louis wants to laugh - it’s clear they have absolutely no idea that Harry’s gay, or maybe they’re convinced that they can be the ones to change his mind. Hah, as if it works like that. He files their comments in the back of his head because he knows Harry would find them hilarious. Maybe he’ll tell him one day, whisper them to him when they’re both laying in bed naked, Harry’s hand carding through Louis' hair and his laughter tickling the back of Louis' neck. Or, maybe he should stop that train of thought before it goes further and he gets himself in trouble.

They get back to shore just as Mallory’s debating the merits of getting her own ship tattoo on her arm (which - holy shit, _no_ , she’s 15 years old) and Louis is tempted to call the girls out for not helping him canoe back. He chooses to let them skip away instead, remembering their comments about Harry in case he needs them as ammunition in the future.

He’s helping a flustered Sophia pull the last of the canoes back in on the sand when he hears a voice calling for Harry. It's Mallory, and when Louis turns around she looks positively frantic. He assumes it’s all part of a ploy to get Harry to pay attention to her, until Harry’s face falls, his eyes going from Mallory’s face to the storm clouds gathering in the sky and back to her face.

“Alright, hang tight. Why don’t you go back your cabin and I’ll go get it?” Louis hears him say, and Mallory nods. There’s a low rumble of thunder that causes her to jump, and then she starts running in the direction of the girls’ cabins, plastic flip flops slapping against her feet.

“What’s up?” Sophia calls as she’s sorting the oars back into their proper places.

“Mallory left her epipen at the hut. I’m gonna paddle back and get it,” Harry answers, just as there’s another loud clap of thunder. Sophia flinches at the sound.

“You absolutely will not, Harry. Not a chance.”

“No but Sophia -”

“Harry, are you mad? It’s about to rain any second now,” Sophia scolds, and Louis can see another, darker storm cloud floating just above their heads. “You could get stuck out there, or drown, and then what would we do?”

“Sophia, she needs that epipen tonight. She can’t be without it.” Harry says, and Louis walks over to stand by his side.

Sophia’s looking at them helplessly; it’s clear that she doesn’t know what to do. Stay on shore and risk an allergy attack, or let Harry go and risk losing _him_.

“I’ll go with you,” Louis decides abruptly, and Harry’s previously tense expression transforms to one of relief.

“Really? Would you, Lou?” He asks earnestly, and Louis nods. “Alright, perfect, thank you so much.”

Sophia goes to protest, arguing the risk isn’t worth losing their lives, but they ignore her. They make quick work of flipping a canoe back over right side up and depositing it in the water. Sophia hands them each a paddle. “Be careful, boys,” she warns. “No funny business. I can cover for you for about forty-five minutes, but any longer and Simon and Ben will start to wonder where you are. _Don’t_ get yourselves killed. We can't afford to lose two counselors.”

“What about losing us as humans? As friends? Are we only good for being counselors?” Louis asks, pinching Sophia’s cheek. She swats him away and waves them off.

They’re halfway across the lake when the first droplets fall, and Louis doesn’t mention them, knows there's no sense in turning back now. They might as well finish the job. By the time they reach the island, the water has gotten a bit violent; nothing they can’t handle, but a stark difference from the calm seas they had met them when they’d made this crossing this morning.

There’s a crack of thunder and an immediate flash of lightning when they reach the dock, and by the time they both get out of the boat and get it tied up, there’s been two more sets of each and the water is falling down furiously.

“Come on!” Harry calls as he runs away from the dock, and Louis follows him, both of them running into the hut in search of the epipen.

“This was a bloody stupid idea, Harold,” Louis hisses as he catches his breath, the screen door swinging shut behind him with a slam. Apparently all the doors at camp slammed like that; Louis still hadn’t quite figured out how to get any of them to be quiet.

“What was I supposed to do? Let a fifteen year old potentially die of an allergic reaction?” Harry retorts, and _shit_ , he looks hot like that, a little riled up, a little angry, his wet hair falling into his eyes.

“Of course not,” Louis answers softly. “Of course not.”

“Right, well,” Harry starts after they’ve looked at each other for a long moment. “Let’s find this thing before we get stuck out here. I’d quite like to sleep in my own bed tonight, rather than this concrete mess,” he says, kicking the floor with the toes of his boot.

“Where the hell is this thing?” Louis asks, looking on top of the tables for it. “Not that many places in here for it to be.”

“I hope it’s not outside,” Harry adds, looking out the window, where the rain is positively lashing down now. “We’ll probably never find it if so.”

“Hey, how’s things with your mum?” Louis asks after a few moments of silence, striving for a casual tone as he peers into a cupboard that contains a can of beans that’s probably older than he is, a lighter, and a bottle of water. Well, at least if they get stranded out here they won’t starve. Or, they probably will, but it’ll at least take a bit longer.

Harry turns to him, looking surprised. “Oh, she’s doing well. I talked to her last night, actually. And then she let me talk to her new boyfriend - Robin, that’s his name - just for a minute. He seemed nice, so like. I guess we’ll see what happen,” he concludes with a shrug. “M’surprised you remembered.”

“Of course I did, Haz,” Louis says earnestly, “I do listen when you talk,” and he takes two steps closer to Harry, his footsteps quiet on the concrete floor.

“Louis,” Harry breathes, and his voice is quiet now that they’re just inches away from each other. “You’re so -” he trails off as his hand comes up to Louis' cheek. He drags his thumb lightly along Louis' cheekbone, and he feels himself freeze. Because Harry - beautiful, sweet, caring Harry - is back in his space, touching him ever so innocently, and Louis has never wanted to drag someone into his bed more than he does this boy.

“You’re so _good_ ,” Harry says after a minute, and it takes Louis a second to place the train of thought, remember the conversation. “I - I like you a lot, you know that? I just…I adore you.”

Louis' heart twists, and he stares at Harry, his deep green eyes the only thing Louis can see. “Me too,” Louis whispers, and then he’s cut off by another crack of thunder that makes them both jump. Harry pulls his hand away from Louis like he’s been burned, and he takes a step back.

“Oh look, there it is.” He points to a table in the corner, and when Louis tilts his head to look under it, the small epipen is indeed under there. Louis' heart feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest, because - what’s going on between them? He’s suddenly conscious of the fact that the two of them are alone again, this time in a sheltered cabin in the middle of a lake where no one can reach them. He’s tempted - so so tempted - but he knows that if he tries anything with Harry he’ll never be able to let him go for the rest of the summer.  He just can tell from the way that he already feels so attached from that kiss the other night.

“D’you - do you think we should go back?” Louis asks, looking out the window. The sky’s clearing up a bit, the rain a little less heavy than it had been ten minutes ago. “Who knows if it’ll stop, but if we don’t go soon we could be stuck out here all night.”

“Yeah,” Harry answers with a defeated look on his face, almost as if he doesn’t want to but knows they should. Maybe he’s just as confused by this whole thing as Louis is. “I guess we should go back.”

The rain is heavy on the way back, and both of their shirts are soaked through within minutes. Louis fears the canoe is going to fill with water and sink. He voices this thought to Harry.

“Well, we’ll just have to paddle faster, won’t we?” He jokes with a smile.

They make it back to the camp just in time for the rainy day contingency plan, an afternoon spent watching movies. The kids are piled into the dining hall, all the tables pushed to the side, and a few of the counselors are passing around popcorn. There’s blankets and pillows and a few of the younger kids appear to have changed into pajamas. The mood is light, but when Niall spots Louis and Harry standing in the back, absolutely drenched, he frowns.

“Where the fuck were the two of you?” He demands, pulling them out into the hallway between the dining hall and the entrance doors. “Had to cover for you, said that Harry wasn’t feeling well. Were the two of you shagging?”

Harry lets out a sharp cough, one that requires Louis to hit him on the back a few times until he’s recovered.

“No, Niall, we weren’t…shagging,” Louis answers. “Why do you keep thinking that anyway? Mallory left her epipen out on the island, in the hut, and she made Harry go back for it. Couldn’t let him die out there, so…”

“Mallory?” Niall asks, eyes narrowed. It’s clear he doesn’t believe them. But then, Niall’s convinced the two of them have been hooking up since day three, so what does he know, really.

“Mallory Quinlan?” Harry says, holding his hand up to Louis' shoulder. “This tall? Brown hair? Sweet, but a bit of a pain in the ass when she wants to be.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, she did look a bit worried when she came in. Alright.” He walks away, back toward the dining hall, and Harry just looks at Louis and shrugs.

“By the way,” Niall adds in a loud whisper as he’s about to open the door, “I still think you two should get together. Don't want to waste true love!”

*

Louis' brain is spinning when he wakes up the next morning, the sun barely risen in the sky. He’s just had a rather, er, _vivid_ dream about Harry, about the two of them and Louis' bed in his old place in London and an empty flat for them to be as loud as they wanted. Which was very, very loud.

 _Fuck._ He hates this, hates knowing he and Harry are both interested in each other, hates the tension between them. Fuck Simon and fuck Ben and fuck the stupid rules.

If only he was so brave to actually do something about it.

He sits up and sees that everyone else in the cabin is still asleep, including Liam. Liam actually looks quite peaceful when he sleeps, like he’s set down the self-imposed weight of needing to be the very best he can. Louis flops back and rolls over, closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep again. No chance.

He peels himself out of bed, bare feet padding on the floor as quietly as possible, and he takes off his shirt, pulling on a fresh one. He does the same with his pants, shedding the old ones and replacing them, and then he puts on a pair of shorts. He sits at the end of his bed for a few minutes, deciding what to do. He could go out to the football pitch, kick around a few balls. He could go for a swim, but then he’d have to get a shower and he’s supposed to meet Eleanor to get supplies for the campfire in an hour.

He slips on a pair of shoes and decides he’ll just go get a cup of tea and maybe beg Barbara or one of the other kitchen ladies to give him something to eat. Harry’s had plenty of luck with that, and he’s about half as charming as him. Maybe he can manage.

Twenty minutes later he’s sitting in a bright red Adirondack chair, cupping a piping hot mug of tea and watching the steam waft into the air. The lake stretches out before him, still and peaceful and quiet. It’s not a sight he’s used to, not when he spends 90% of his days chasing after kids.

He thinks about his mum back at home, his siblings, his step dad. It’s a Saturday, so they’re probably all at home, maybe having lunch right now, the kids probably running around the garden. He misses them, but in a way that’s distant, a low humming in the back of his brain. He loves them of course, loves them desperately like he’s never loved anything else in his life, but he thinks that when he’s done at the end of the summer he’ll move back to London. He has no clue what he’ll do, of course, but it just feels like time to move on again. As he takes a bite of his toast, he wonders what Harry’s doing in the autumn, guesses he’s probably continuing uni in London, recognizes that this something he really shouldn’t be thinking about at all.

It's the Fourth of July, his first proper holiday spent in America, and maybe he should feel a bit weird, an Englishman in the United States celebrating the very day they tried to get rid of people like him. But mostly he’s looking forward to it, excited to see what all the buildup is about.

The morning bell sounds, a loud blaring gong that Louis has gotten used to over the past few weeks, and he really should get back to the cabin to help Liam get the kids up. It hasn’t gotten any easier, the cranky kids still just as cranky in the mornings, but he’s learned which ones need to be left alone to get themselves ready and which ones need an extra bit of encouragement to get out of bed. It’s things like that that make him feel like a proper dad sometimes. He figures, though, that when he has kids he probably won’t have twenty. Maybe more like six.

He wonders how many kids Harry wants.

_Shut up, Louis, stop being a bloody idiot._

*

“So I know that Simon told us to get fifteen packages of chocolate, but do you think he’d mind if we picked up twenty instead?” Eleanor picks up yet another package of chocolate and tosses it into the cart, where it joins ten others.

“That’s number eleven,” Louis says idly, picking at his thumbnail as he watches her inspect the next package and put it back on the shelf. What her criteria is, he’ll never know, but he’s learned to keep his mouth shut. “I don’t know, El, I’m the worst person to ask about that. I’ll always tell you to get more, to be honest.”

“Okay, well then, twenty it is,” she answers, satisfied as she adds three more to the pile. Once they’ve finished, they move onto the butcher section, having been instructed to purchase many, many hamburgers.

Louis wrinkles his nose. “I know this is my first time here and all, but I get the sense that Walmart is not the best place for us to buy meat. Or really, anything that they’re advertising as fresh.”

Eleanor frowns as she inspects a package of hamburger patties and, apparently deeming them adequate, puts them in the cart. “Let’s not complain, Lou. Let’s just do what we’re told so we can get back to camp, alright?”

Louis fights the urge to roll his eyes. Eleanor can be such a fucking bossy pain in the ass when she wants to be. But then he thinks of all the times she’s stuck up for him, helped him when his campers were having trouble, cracked a joke just to make him laugh, and he bites back the snarky comment that was on the tip of his tongue.

“So what’s the deal with you and Harry?” She asks as she pushes the cart away from the meat section. “Shall we stop by the jewelry section so you can buy him a ring?”

On second thought, maybe he’ll make a run for the van that’s parked out in the lot out front and leave Eleanor here alone.

*

The Fourth of July is momentous. It’s fireworks and screaming kids and fingers sticky with marshmallows. It’s soda cans piled high in the bin and scavenger hunts and cheeseburgers. It's water fights and the smell of bug spray and a swim in the lake. It’s all the best parts about camp rolled into one day, with the added benefit of there being absolutely no rules to follow, no need to boss around any campers for an entire 24 hours.

It’s dinner time, and Louis is sitting on the grass with the lads eating a cheeseburger. They’re surrounding by squealing teenagers, but it’s become much easier to tune out than Louis ever would have expected. They absolutely never shut up, so he’d had to learn how pretty quickly. Over the past few weeks, he’s marveled at how even the most mature of kids can turn into a child all over again just from a few games.

He takes a final bite of his burger, finishing it off, and then he turns to look at the lads, the five of them sitting in a circle, drinks and crisps in the center.

“You’ve got a bit of ketchup - here, let me get it,” Harry says then, reaching out his thumb to wipe it off Louis' cheek. He wipes it off and then, in a move that looks well-practiced and almost certainly intended to drive Louis crazy, sticks his thumb in his mouth and licks the ketchup off. _Jesus, fuck_. Louis swallows hard and looks away, can feel Harry’s eyes burning into him like a laser.

His eyes fall on Niall, who just gives Louis a weighty look, raising his eyebrows. Louis can feel him weighing his options, deciding whether it’s worth saying something now or saving his teasing for something better. He must take Louis' murderous glare for what it’s intended to be, because he looks at Liam and asks if he wants an ice cream.

Louis turns back to Harry and offers him a bashful smile, hoping it doesn't look as heated as he feels.

*

In the flickering light of the campfire Harry’s eyes are bright green, taking in the light and throwing it back. It’s almost like they’re shining. Louis knows this because he’s about six inches from Harry’s face, sitting perched on the arm of the Adirondack chair, practically in his lap. There were other chairs, of course, but getting one required dragging one over from the other edge of the campfire, and Louis told the others he was fine sharing with Harry, that it wasn’t a problem. Another strike against him in Niall’s tally of _‘These two are in love,’_ he’s sure of it. He doesn’t care.

He wishes he was drinking a beer right now, something that would slide down his throat, cold and sharp, but without that as an option, the soda he’s drinking will have to do the trick. Harry turns his head to look at him, opens his mouth as if to say something, and without thinking Louis brings his free hand up to play with the hair at the back of Harry’s neck. His hand pauses halfway through the movement, but something wills him to continue. Harry looks at him, a question in his eyes, and Louis just gives a half-hearted shrug.

 _Want you,_ he doesn’t say. _I always want you._

He hasn’t quite made sense of it, this thing he feels for Harry, the frantic buzzing in his bones anytime they’re around each other. It’s been like that almost since that very first day, the day that Harry grinned at him and Louis knew he was in big trouble.

Louis slides up on the chair and presses his arm against Harry’s, desperate for a bit of contact, anything to tether him. He tangles his finger around a curled piece of hair, and Harry gives him a fond smile, a private one just for him. Louis isn’t quite sure what they’re doing, but somehow this feels more intimate, more vulnerable than anything else they’ve ever done together: kissing after the pub, falling on top of each other during a water fight, almost kissing again in the hut yesterday. It feels softer, more momentous.

Louis should pull away, should remember that they’re surrounded by hundreds of campers and the entire staff of the camp, but he doesn’t care right now. He’s felt teased by Harry all day, felt a little too hot in his skin, so very turned on by green eyes and pink lips and a voice that sounds like syrup. It’s no different than any other day, really, he should be able to avoid it, but he feels like he _can’t_.

The fireworks start then, a loud boom and then a pop, and color erupts into the sky, red and blue and green and orange. Zayn gives a low whistle from the chair next to Louis. “Look at that,” Liam says, his voice colored with awe. It’s remarkable, it really is.

“I think that one’s my favorite,” Harry whispers into Louis' ear as a firework explodes and litters the sky with what looks like a thousand sparkling white dots, all centered around a larger circle. It’s gorgeous.

“Yeah, I like that one,” Louis replies, and Harry brings his arm around Louis' waist and squeezes. He slowly runs his hand up and down Louis' side, from his underarm to the top of the curve of his hip, and Louis shivers with the motion. When he dares glance at Harry, he sees that his pupils are dilated, his mouth parted slightly. The expression on his face twists something in Louis' gut, and it’s all he can do to keep himself in the chair instead of grabbing Harry’s hand and pulling him to the absolute nearest bed and having his way with him.

“I want to kiss you,” Harry whispers in his ear.

_Fuck._

“Fuck,” Louis answers, barely more than an exhalation, not even an intentional reaction, but Harry shivers all the same. And yeah, that’s probably not the best way to respond to someone who’s just told you they’re interested in making out with you, but this is Harry, and he’s Louis, and the two of them have never done exactly what they’re supposed to do, have they?

“Fuck. Yeah, I’d like that,” Harry agrees with a smirk, and _sweet Jesus_ there is no way Louis is going to survive six more weeks of this, not when he has this beautiful boy sitting next to him looking like he would be happy to rip Louis' clothes off right here in front of everyone. But what the hell is he doing, why is he flirting with Louis so openly?

“I’d let you,” Louis whispers, and this time it’s Harry who shivers. Louis really needs to stop himself before either of them get in trouble. Above them, fireworks explode, three four five six, all in a row, and Louis only has eyes for Harry.

*

Louis walks Harry back to his cabin at the end of the night, their pinkies brushing every so often. It’s the smallest thing, but it makes Louis smile all the same.

His throat tightens when they hug goodnight, a hug that is eons shorter than Louis wants it to be, but there are campers all around them, streaming in droves to their own cabins. They’re probably not that noticeable, they probably wouldn’t get in that much trouble if Louis hugged Harry tight and didn’t let go of him for a few hours, maybe no one would see them or pull them apart. Maybe it could work. All the same, Louis gives Harry an all-too-brief hug and when Harry whispers, “Night, Lou,” Louis rises on his toes and brushes his lips against Harry’s cheek. He can feel Harry’s beaming smile.

*

He’s been awake for too many hours. Far, far too many hours. He really should be asleep right now, he should be absolutely exhausted from waking up early and going shopping with Eleanor and playing a scavenger hunt with the campers and eating ice cream and watching fireworks and thinking about Harry, Harry, Harry.

That’s why he’s still awake, really, laying in bed over an hour after the fireworks have ended. He’s thinking about Harry’s confession, whispered low in his ear like it was the biggest secret of his life. _I want to kiss you._ And the way he’d looked, eyes desperate, face slack with it.

_Fuck._

Louis decides to go for a walk, slips on a pair of trainers and quietly pads outside, making sure to let the door shut quietly, holding onto it as it closes rather than letting it slam. He needs to get out, he needs to stop thinking. The lake, he’ll go to the lake. He’ll sit there and think for a bit until he feels properly tired. It feels like it was days ago that he last made this trek rather than this morning. This has possibly been the longest day of his life.

He gets to the edge of the beach and stops short when he sees a person. There’s someone sitting there, in the same seat he’d occupied this morning. He’s about to turn around and head back to his cabin, maybe just sit on the porch instead, and then he recognizes their profile.

It’s Harry. Because _of fucking course_ it’s Harry. And if Louis wasn’t so goddamn desperate, he’d probably laugh, would probably find it funny that they’re both the only two awake in the whole camp, and they both found themselves here.

It doesn’t feel funny, though. It feels like a chance. An opportunity that he’d be silly to waste.

“Hazza,” Louis calls quietly, and Harry’s head snaps to look at him.

“Louis,” Harry answers, and he looks frozen, like he can’t quite believe that it’s Louis standing in front of him. For his part, Louis feels the same.

Louis walks closer, walks right up to him until the tops of their shoes are touching, and Harry brings his hands up to rest on Louis' thighs.

“Hi,” Harry breathes and there’s a moment where they both stare at each other, eyes locked. Then, as if reacting to the sound of a starting gun, Harry’s hands move to the back of Louis' calves to pull him in and Louis is falling forward, scrambling for purchase as he falls onto Harry’s lap, knees digging into his thighs as his hands wrap around the back Harry’s neck and their lips press together. _Finally, finally, finally._

That’s all that’s really going through his head then, kissing Harry. _Finally_. It’s even better than that first time, probably because they’ve both decided to throw caution to the wind. It feels right this time, in spite of how wrong he knows it really is.

It feels like a crescendo, like waves rising and breaking, like the grand finale of the firework show. It feels like winning the sixth form football trophy, like holding his baby sister for the first time, like pure euphoria. It feels like there’s been a long winding road to get to this moment, and now they’re finally getting it right.

“Louis,” Harry whispers again, into the lack of space between them, and Louis resettles himself so that his knees are on either side of Harry’s.“What are we doing?” He whispers when he pulls away again.

“I don’t know,” Louis answers honestly. “And this sounds so fucking cheesy, Haz, like some kind of romance film, but…I can’t stay away from you anymore. I don’t want to. Don’t care what we do, but I’m sick of telling myself I can’t want you.”

If it were anyone else he'd certainly cringe at how absolutely lame and silly he sounds, but this is just anyone. This is _Harry_ , and that makes all the difference.

“Me too,” Harry admits as his hand comes up to cup Louis' cheek. “Do you know how many times I've wanted to do this? Every day since that night at the bar, and a million times before that.”

There's no other option for Louis then but to kiss him again, just because he can, because he feels a little reckless. It’s a little sloppy, but it’s Harry, it’s them, it’s perfect. It starts off slow, comforting, that “yes, finally” feeling, and then it quickly turns rough, Louis' stubble rubbing against Harry’s chin, and _oh,_ if he’s going to be kissing Harry like this a lot he should probably shave more often. Harry’s mouth is warm and soft and Louis feels like he never wants to separate, wants to kiss him for the rest of his life.

 _I always want to kiss you_.

And now they are.

“I want -” Harry whispers, rough into Louis' ear as his hips snap up in a motion that seems involuntary, and he cuts himself off with a moan as Louis nips at the side of his neck in response. Harry’s hands come down to grope Louis' bum and he gives it a squeeze. Louis gives a little yelp at the feeling.

“You like that?” Harry asks in a low voice, rough and gravelly even as he's smiling. “Lou, your arse is -”

Despite wanting to know every little thought Harry has ever had about Louis' bum, Louis wants to nip at his lower lip more, so he does.

“Been thinking about this forever,” Louis murmurs through kisses.

“Me too,” Harry answers, and then kisses him again.

*

Louis is in a bit of a daze at breakfast the next morning, so he doesn't even notice Harry approaching until he’s sat directly across from him.

“Hi, Lou,” Harry says, and Louis' head snaps up and he blushes. Because this is Harry, whose kisses taste like sweet summer wine, Harry who had kissed the breath out of Louis until he was dizzy with it, Harry who made the most glorious sounds last night when he’d spilled into Louis' hand. Louis blushes because he did that to Harry last night, he made Harry fall apart like that, and damn if he isn’t going to feel a little bit cocky about it.

“Hi,” Louis replies, and the smile that spreads over his face is a little painful. He doesn't care.

“Hi,” Harry says again, and they just stare at each other as Louis dangles the spoon for his cereal in front of his face, swinging it back and forth like a pendulum.

“Good morning,” Louis responds, just to mess with him, and he thinks that they could play this game for as long as they were allowed, just because the two of them are the most stubborn people on earth.

“It is a good morning, isn't it?” Harry answers with a grin, and then his voice gets low when he speaks again. “Especially waking up after a night like last night.”

When Louis' tongue reaches out to wet his lips, Harry’s face flushes and his eyes grow dark, a deep navy blue that gives Louis some _ideas_. Harry’s eyes fly straight to his lips, and then Louis bites his lip to hide his smirk.

“Oi, Tommo, wipe that lovesick smile off your face,” Niall orders as he slides in next to Harry. The tray holding his breakfast hits the table with a mighty clang, and it’s joined by two more in quick succession as Liam and Zayn sit down too.

“When are the two of you fuckers gonna figure this thing out and get together?” Niall continues, and Harry and Louis share a guilty glance. He raises his eyebrow and Harry gives the tiniest of nods.

“Actually -” Louis starts, but he's cut off by Niall raising his voice.

“Listen, you can tell me all you want there's nothing between you but in twenty years when you're both sad and alone and Harry’s got twelve cats, I won't be there to cry to. Because I will be with my _wife_ , whoever she is. Because I will actually have had the balls to _go after her_.”

He turns away from them and turns to Liam and Zayn, starting up a conversation about the weather, of all things. Louis looks at Harry with wide eyes, a helpless expression plain on his face, and Harry just shrugs one shoulder.

“You tried,” he mouths, and then they both laugh.

*

Louis and Harry try twice more that day to tell Liam, Niall and Zayn that they’ve finally gotten their shit sorted out and they’ve hooked up, but they keep getting interrupted or talked over each time.

“Maybe we just shouldn’t tell them,” Harry whispers in Louis' ear in the dinner line that night, after they’ve just pulled the boys aside and tried to confess. Louis plops a spoonful of mashed potatoes on his plate. “Keep it our little secret.”

“You think so?” Louis asks as he moves onto the green beans. “Is that really a good idea?”

“I mean, it’s probably not the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

“No, the worst idea you’ve ever had was letting a bunch of thirteen year old boys come up with your next tattoo idea. There is no way you’re ever actually getting the word ‘penis’ with _an arrow_ tattooed on your upper thigh. That’s not happening; I won’t allow it.”

“You won’t allow it, huh? What are you gonna do, punish me?” Harry asks into his ear, and Louis hopes to God that Barbara the chef is hard of hearing. He swallows hard, and from the way Harry smirks afterward, he knows it didn’t go unnoticed.

“You really think we shouldn’t tell them?”

“I mean…we’re gonna have to sneak around anyway, yeah? Like, with that whole rules thing that I guess we’ve decided to ignore. Might make it a little more fun this way.”

“Secret rendezvous, I like it.”

“Plus, we tried, yeah?” Harry reasons as he pours them each a jug of water. The ice gets caught in the spout and Louis pokes it out with his finger. “Like, we tried to tell them. So they kinda deserve it.”

*

Louis stands in the back of Harry’s classroom the next day, watching as he helps a girl pour flour and butter and two eggs into a bowl. Louis is leaning against the wall, hoping Harry’s too busy to catch him staring.

“Harry, can you help me?” Another girl asks, and within an instant Harry’s at her side, hand on top of hers as he shows her how to whisk.

“Okay, so you just take the whisk and mix it all around for a bit, okay? There you go. You got it.”

Louis had known this from day one of the campers’ arrival, but Harry absolutely loves kids. Like, deeply truly loves them, ‘probably wants a baby right now’ kind of loves them. Absently, he wonders what it would be like to have kids with Harry, which of them would be the fun dad and which would be the one that made lunches and which of them would - _okay, enough_.

“Alright, everyone,” Harry says as he makes his way back to the front of the room, and suddenly Louis has a flash of him in five years teaching his own class of secondary school students. “Once you’ve poured your batter into the tins, you can pop them into the ovens up here. Be really careful, make sure you use the oven mitts like we talked about.”

He’s grating a lemon peel over by the sink, his eyes intermittently flicking over to make sure the kids are behaving as they mix their frosting together. Suddenly he notices Louis standing there, and if Louis isn’t imaging it, his smile turns into something brighter, a little more bashful.

Louis gives a little wave, and Harry gives him a questioning glance. He tilts his head to the door and Louis nods. _Outside._

“Okay, I’ll be back in one second guys, I trust that you won't burn anything down while I'm gone. If you do, well, you’ll be in trouble.”

Louis steps outside the door and he can hear the classroom erupt into low chatter as Harry leaves. It reminds him suddenly, sharply, of being back in secondary school, the way anytime the teachers left the room everyone would start gossiping. And then he’s not thinking about that anymore because Harry’s got his hands wrapped around Louis' wrists, gently guiding him forward.

“Hi,” Harry says, low and throaty as he pushes Louis against the wall. Louis goes easily, his body soft and pliant as Harry presses kisses to the length of his jaw. Louis leans into the motion, letting his eyes fall shut as Harry presses kisses all over his face. “This is a surprise,” he whispers, and then he nips at Louis' ear. It’s not a hard nip, but the brief pain of it makes Louis remember something.

“Wait, wait.” He interjects between brief kisses. “I did come here with a purpose, as nice as this is.”

“You mean to tell me,” Harry accuses as he pulls back, “that you came to visit me during my lesson and it was _not_ for the express purpose of making out with me? I’m hurt, Tommo. I thought I knew you so much better than this.”

Louis giggles, and then wishes he hadn’t; this is supposed to be a serious conversation. “Okay, first of all, never call me Tommo again. That sounded really weird.”

“What do you prefer? Pumpkin? Apple of my eye? My one and only -” Harry teases in a cutesy tone, and Louis shuts him up the only way he knows how: kissing. He can’t believe that this is the kind of kissing he’s been missing out on for a whole month, sweet and warm and hot and passionate, the kind that makes him weak in the knees even from just the brush of Harry’s tongue on his. Distantly, he recognizes that he’s so bloody gone for Harry already, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Okay, okay, let’s focus. Separate.” Louis orders, and Harry straightens up and takes two big steps back, bringing his hand up to his forehead in salute.

“If you don’t stop right now, I’ll never again do that thing I did on the beach the other night.”

“Lou,” Harry whines. “No. That was the best handjob of my life.”

“Well thanks. Now please shut up, you bloody idiot. I came to tell you that Zayn’s freaking out and he has to make those ‘plastic braiding things’ with the kids-”

“I like your use of air quotes there,” Harry cuts in. Louis rolls his eyes before continuing. At some point Harry has taken a step forward, back toward Louis again, and he’s just close enough for Louis to swat at him. Harry grabs his hand when he tries and sandwiches it between his own two hands, holding it loosely.

“And he needs your help.” Louis finishes. “Jesus, that took ages. You’d think someone like you would be able to listen a little closer. Then again, of course it took withholding sex to get you to pay attention. You’re such a cliche, Styles.”

Harry rolls his eyes, but the kiss he presses to the back of Louis' hand betrays his true feelings.

“Anyway, will you come meet us in the arts cabin when you’re done here?” Louis asks, leaning in for a goodbye kiss. Harry nods, and gives him not just one kiss, but two, three, four. Louis finally pulls away, well aware that Harry has a classroom of kids just behind them and they’re already at risk of getting in trouble. They don’t need one of the kids to come out and catch them.

“Thanks, love. Be good!” Louis says as he scuttles away. Behind him, he hears Harry laugh.

*

“I know you said he’d be here soon, Tommo, but if he doesn’t show up soon I’m fucked.”

Zayn is pacing the classroom of the arts cabin, wringing his hands and rubbing the back of his neck.

“Would ya relax there, Zaynie? You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor if you don’t stop soon,” Niall says from where he’s perched on a desk, fiddling with the colorful plastic cords. He’s picked green, white and orange, of course, but first he’d informed them that, “The Irish colors are green, white and orange but we call the flag itself green, white and gold.” He’s got them in some kind of twisted mess and it looks nothing like the picture Zayn has on his desk. Maybe it's not supposed to be, knowing Niall. Maybe he's trying to create his own thing.

“Alright, let's have a look here and see if we can figure this out,” Louis announces as he picks up the instruction sheet and four different colors of plastic cord. “How hard can it be _really_ , if a bunch of thirteen year olds can do it?” Liam only cocks an eyebrow and the other two ignore him. He can't really fault them; he’d had little success the first time he’d tried.

“Where the hell is Harry?” Zayn groans when Louis gives up a few minutes later. “If he doesn't show up in the next three minutes I'm gonna tie him to his bed and let the kids throw water balloons at him.”

“You know, Zayn, I usually only do that with people I’m dating. But if you’re interested...”

They all turn around to see Harry strolling into the room, a cocky smirk on his face. It gives Louis butterflies, but clearly Zayn doesn't feel the same way because he looks ready to fight.

“Never mind about that, come show me how to do this fucking thing.” Harry allows himself to be dragged to the desk at the front of the room and comes to stand next to Louis.

Zayn grabs the paper out of Louis' hand and shoves it in Harry’s direction. “If you really know how to do this, prove it. Preferably in the next ten minutes.” His tone is bossy, but they can all sense the desperation underneath.

Louis stands close, his chin practically on Harry’s shoulder as he leans over him to see what he's doing. Harry makes quick work of it, completing what the rest of them couldn't manage in about seven minutes.

“There you go,” he says, handing it to Zayn, who looks awed. They’re all so impressed that Harry actually managed to do it that Louis has to bite back a proud smile.

“Okay, so the starting stitch can be the hardest part, so I’ll start up a couple for you. Cause like, the kids will catch on quick enough and do their own thing. But here, take the blue one here, and fold it over the pink one like this…”

*

He's recruited Liam and Niall to help him with a football match three days later. He and Liam are on opposing teams and Niall’s the referee. He’s split up the kids randomly, except he made sure that Daniel, the annoying one who’d made fun of Molly that first week of camp, was on Liam’s team. Let Liam deal with the little shit.

Molly, for her part, has proved to be a firecracker both on and off the pitch, and she was the first one Louis had made sure was on his team. If anyone asked him though, _of course_ he hadn't done any kind of drafts or selection; it was entirely random.

Niall and Liam were technically supposed to be off leading other activities, but with camp more than halfway over, the counselors had gotten a little less lax about the rules. As long as everyone was accounted for and relatively happy while engaged in an activity, no one cared as much which activity they were supposed to be doing.

“Five minutes left!” Niall yells, and Louis intercepts a beautiful pass by Noah, stepping in front of Liam and blocking him to get behind the ball. He dribbles the ball around him, his many hours of practicing fast footwork routines coming in handy, and passes it off to Molly.

“Run for it, Molly, go!” He yells to her as they’re both running down the field. He can feel Liam and the rest of the kids right on his tail, but he and Molly are still just ahead of them.

“Louis!” She screams, and he looks over at her just before she reaches the penalty box. There’s a split second where he knows what’s going to happen right before it does, and then the goalkeeper shifts to the side and Molly kicks the ball over to Louis. The others are encroaching right on his space, and with the goalkeeper distracted, it’s now or never.

He strikes the ball with the inside of his foot, swings his leg around for the follow through, and then watches the arc of the ball in the air as it sails into the top corner of the net. It’s not his best work, but a goal’s a goal.

He turns around to the sight of screaming kids running toward him, and he just has a split second of warning before they all pile on top of him. As he falls to the ground he spots Harry on the side of the pitch, his arms raised high and a proud smile on his face. And then Louis is on the ground, below many many sweaty, jubilant children. He had severely underestimated the number of puppy piles he would experience at camp, most often at the bottom.

What makes it even better is that when he finally emerges and lifts up his jersey to wipe his face, exposing the entirety of his stomach, Harry shoots him a lascivious grin and licks his lips.

*

Louis thinks they must be doing a decent job of pretending nothing happened, because the other three haven’t said anything unusual. Of course, Niall’s still asking Louis about when he’s going to finally tell Harry he’s in love with him, and Louis shuts him down every day.

They’ve been pulling each other out of classrooms with “Sorry, can I just borrow Harry for a minute?” and waking up early to share kisses and sneaking out of the cabins for sneaky handjobs down by the boathouse when everyone else is asleep for ten days now. Most nights, though not all, have involved a whispered dinner time question of, “the usual spot?” and a shared, secretive smile.

Neither of them can believe that no one has caught on, because Louis feels an intense need to just be closer anytime he’s around Harry, always trying to sit next to him or put his arm around him or have a hand on him in some way, and Harry’s the same way. It’s not necessarily possessive, because of course they can’t show off to anyone anyway, but it’s more of a reminder for them both. Louis has heard whispers from campers both male and female, and even a few counselors; he knows Harry’s the crush of the entire camp. The difference is that Louis is the one kissing Harry and Louis is the one that Harry’s chosen.

So no one has caught on yet, and it makes them drop their guards a little bit more each day, both of them becoming a bit more pliant and cuddly as the days go by. Maybe someone will find out one day, but they’ll deal with that when they come to it. For now, Louis is content to kiss the breath out of Harry every time they’re alone.

*

Harry’s chest is serving as an excellent pillow for Louis' head one afternoon as they laze about in the grass with the lads; due to the heat, regular lunch has been scrapped for favor of a picnic at the field. Louis is pretty sure this really means ‘We’re too tired and hot and sweaty to figure out what to do with you so please just entertain yourselves, children’ and he’s entirely fine with this.

“Okay, hold out your wrist.”

Louis flings his right arm backwards and up in the air.

“Okay, wow, no need to hit me in the face, lo-Louis,” Harry says, and Louis freezes, because Harry was just about to call him love and surely they’re about to be found out. Fuck. He looks over to Niall as Harry grips his wrist, but Niall is involved in an intense staring contest with Zayn, with Liam serving as the moderator. They're not even paying attention to them. Honestly, those three are so bloody oblivious that it’s a wonder they’ve made it to their early twenties at all.

“Nice,” Louis mutters, and Harry tightens his grip on his wrist in response. Which is not exactly a punishment, because Harry _knows_ he has a thing for that.

“Shut up and let me tie this bracelet on you.” Louis lets Harry have his way with him then, laying still for a moment, and when Harry pushes his hand back down to give Louis control of it again, he’s got a rainbow plaited friendship bracelet on there, about an inch wide.

“Haz,” Louis breathes as he scrambles to his knees to face Harry, who sits up as best he can. Louis is consumed with a sudden, desperate need to kiss him and drag him away to properly show him just how much he loves it, but he settles for throwing his arms around Harry and burying his face in his shoulder.

“You like it, then?” Harry asks, and he sounds a tad uncertain, like there’s a universe in which he spends hours making Louis a very complicated rainbow friendship bracelet and Louis _doesn’t_ like it.

“I proper love it, Haz,” Louis whispers in his ear, and then he drops a sneaky kiss to Harry’s shoulder. “Thank you, I know that took ages to make.”

“Excuse me, Harry, Louis, sorry to interrupt,” a flat voice says from behind them, and Louis freezes. It’s Simon.

 _Oh fuck. Fucking fuckity fuck._ They’ve been caught, Simon’s spotted them sneaking out and they’ve just made it worse with this whole spectacle, basically ruined any chance they would have had at denying the whole thing. _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

Louis turns around as if in slow motion, taking his hands from around Harry’s neck and dropping them to his sides. “Yes?” He asks, and he tries to sound as low key and casual as possible. Which of course means that it comes out in a high squeak and he sounds panicky and stressed.

“Can I have a word with you both?” Simon asks with the tilt of his head, turning away as if he already knows they’ll follow.

Harry gives him a little squeeze on his hip as they both stagger to their feet and Louis wants to slap it away, wants to whip around and accuse, “Don’t you see how much trouble we’re in?”

Louis trudges behind Simon and Harry follows, until they reach the edge of the field, and Simon stops short.

“Okay, so the two of you,” he begins, and Louis tenses, hands balled into fists at his side. He doesn’t want to hear Simon sending them home, doesn’t want to think about the shame of having to pack his bags and go home and face his mother, doesn’t want to think about saying goodbye to Harry so abruptly. He’s picturing the faces of the other counselors jeering at him as he’s sent away in a taxi, picturing Simon and Ben and Nick standing there with palms outstretched as they ask for their money back, pictures arriving home in Doncaster and seeing his mother’s angry face. When will they have to go? Will they be allowed stay one more night to say their goodbyes to the campers or will they have to leave right away?

“Yes sir, we can absolutely do that,” Harry answers with an enthusiastic nod when Louis decides to tune back into the conversation, and he sounds…happy? Like genuinely happy, not displeasure thinly veiled as joy.

He turns to look at Louis. “Yeah, yes, of course,” Louis says, eyes focused on Harry even as he speaks to Simon.

“Great, I look forward to it,” Simon concludes, and then he shakes each of their hands before striding away.

“What the fuck was that about?” Louis asks in a hushed tone as soon as Simon’s out of hearing range.

“What d’you mean what the fuck was that about? Weren’t you listening?”

Louis gives him a light punch to the upper arm, and Harry winces, rubbing the point of contact. Okay, it’s not like it was really that hard; Louis would never intentionally hurt him. “No, I wasn’t listening! I didn’t want to hear him saying we owed him hundreds of pounds and needed to pack our bags and get on the next flight to London!”

“We’re not being sent home!” Harry is incredulous, shaking his head in what Louis thinks is amusement. Louis doesn’t find it very funny at all. “He said that cabins 16 and 18 have been the two best cabins all summer and he wants to send us - the counselors - on a camping trip. As like, a reward.”

Louis' eyes widen. “So we’re safe? We haven’t been found out?”

“No, you bloody idiot. We haven’t been found out. We’re not going home. We’re going camping.”

“Oh, thank God.” Louis falls forward with relief, and luckily Harry is there to catch him. “Hey, does this mean we can share a tent? Maybe even a sleeping bag?” He wiggles his eyebrows, and Harry laughs.

“Yeah, maybe it does.”

“Hey, we can finally spend a night together!” Louis exclaims, and he feels his face brighten along with Harry’s. “You know, you’ll get to see what I look like right when I wake up.”

“I’ve already seen that,” Harry answers as they start to walk back to the lads.

“Yeah, but not like, sleepy and just waking up,” Louis says with an eyebrow raise. “Hey, we could have some fun sexy times out there in the woods. You could protect me from bears.”

“I hardly think the bears are going to be scared of you, Lou. More likely to be scared of Liam, don’t you think?”  
  
“Would you shut up and focus on the important part?”

Harry grins. “Which is all the sex we can have if we’re really quiet, right?”

“Which is all the sex we can have,” Louis answers with a smile, and then he swings their arms together.

*

The more Louis thinks about it, the more certain he is that Harry Styles is a specific instrument of torture made to ruin him. He's been specifically designed to wreck Louis' last remaining shred of productivity, cloud his brain, and absolutely destroy him for anyone else? How else would someone explain the dimple, which Louis had spent a solid ten minutes tracing with his tongue yesterday? How would they write off all his fucking tattoos, the butterfly, the laurels that Louis likes to grip as Harry coaxes him to an orgasm with his hand? How would they explain the goddamn outfit - or lack thereof - he’s currently wearing?

Louis swallows hard when Harry greets him that morning as he’s setting up the ticket booth.

“Morning, Lou. Again.”

Louis has to fight to keep his jaw from dropping, and he can feel Harry’s smirk without even looking. His eyes follow a line down his chest, from his swallow tattoos to his butterfly to the laurels on his hip bones and yes, now that he’s looking for it, he can see the faint bruises in the shape of his own thumbs. Harry’s gone tan and golden brown from many hours spent in the sun. But Louis has seen all that before, has spent hours at night when he should be sleeping nipping and biting at every single one of this tattoos.

“That’s - that's not what you were wearing at breakfast.” Louis' voice is rough. He presses his lips into a thin line and tries to stay very still as his eyes take in the tiny swimming trunks Harry’s wearing. They're banana yellow, and probably sized to fit a fifteen year old girl. Maybe Louis should check with Sara and Mallory and see if anything is missing from their cabin.

“Yeah, I didn't want to spoil the surprise.” Harry’s voice is light, mocking; he _knows_ what he’s doing right now.

“Well…I'm surprised!” Louis exclaims, mockery lacing his tone. “Now can you put your shirt on?”

Harry twirls his gray Camp Timber Lake t-shirt around his finger. “Maybe I won’t, maybe I’ll just give everyone a show.”

“Harold, people don’t want to see that. This is a kid’s camp. Please put your shirt on or I won’t be responsible for my actions.” Louis is trying not to beg, because he knows that’s what Harry wants, and Harry’s answering grin is proof enough that it’s too late. He’s enjoying watching Louis suffer.

“Maybe that’s the point,” Harry teases.

“Harry.” Louis whines. “Please. Why are you even wearing those tiny shorts anyway?”

“Dunk tank. Gonna let a million kids throw balls at a target for the sheer pleasure of seeing me dunked underwater.”

“Listen, if you don’t put that shirt on right this minute, I swear to God I will be first in line for the pleasure of seeing your terrified face as you fall into that tank.”

“I mean, I’m not gonna stop you.” Harry acknowledges. “Alright. For the kids. I wouldn’t want them to see you rip my clothes off or something.”

“Thank you.” Louis exhales, and he finds he can breathe a little easier once Harry’s wearing a shirt. Damn him. “Now get to work, stop torturing me.”

“Fine, fine, fine. I will keep all my clothes on.” Harry leans in close and bends his head down toward him. Louis shivers at the way his breath ghosts over his ear. “If you’re good though, I might let you take them off me later.”

“Get out of here!” Louis orders, shoving Harry away with both hands. When Harry walks away though, they’re both grinning. It’s going to be a long day.

*

Louis has never actually been to a carnival, but he’s seen them in films, and he’s pretty certain this one is outside the realm of normal carnivals. That being said, this is summer camp, and summer camp seems to operate within its own set of rules entirely.

He’s just finished judging a pie eating contest that had ended with Sophia, Zayn, Eleanor and Liam shoving pie into the losers’ faces. A bit violent, maybe, but the kids had found it entertaining. The bitter part of him was happy to see Dan lose, because that kid still had not learned his lesson from the first week of camp. The fact that Louis got to watch Liam gently shove the pie at him was only a bonus.

Louis makes his way over to the other edge of the field, where Niall’s currently playing DJ. There’s a group of kids dancing the Macarena and Niall is singing the words in perfectly accented Spanish. He must have done something right this summer, because while the kids aren’t perfect, they’ve got all the words down.

“Tommo!” Niall interrupts his singing into the mic to pull Louis by the hand onto the DJ platform that houses a laptop and speakers.

“What the hell are you doing, Nialler?” Niall is pure sunshine right now as he dances around Louis. He’s in his true form as an entertainer. He likes making people happy, likes making them feel better about their days, likes making them smile. That’s what makes him the perfect camp counselor; it’s like he was made for this job.

“Sing with me!” Niall yells to him as the song ends. “What d’you want to listen to? Needs to be vaguely kid appropriate though, before you pick something ridiculous that’s all about sex.”

Louis rolls his eyes, though that’s mostly about how he hates how well his friends know him. He’s too predictable sometimes, honestly. He scrolls through the list of songs on the laptop, and finally settles on his choice.

“This one.” He points to the screen.

“Tommo, hope the kids know this one, they might be a bit young for it.” Niall clicks on the song he’d picked. “But still, excellent choice, young lad.”

  
“I’m older than you,” Louis argues as the familiar strains of _I Want It That Way_ start up.

“Ah, true, but what I lack in age I make up for in brains,” Niall replies. On the field the kids are dancing and singing. To their left Eleanor and Sophia are doing face painting, and he can hear Eleanor singing as she paints on the beginning of what Louis thinks is probably going to be a tiger.

“You are.” Niall sings, pointing at Louis.

“My fire.” Louis continues.

“The one desire.” Niall adds. They go back and forth, trading lines for the entirety of the song, adding hand motions and different dance moves as they see fit. It’s not until the last bars of the song fade out that they notice they’ve made a spectacle of themselves, that there’s twenty kids staring at them in wide-eyed wonder and clapping furiously. Louis is on his knees in front of Niall, hands clutched to his chest in mock despair. Niall’s making a heartbroken face, as if his lover has just scorned him and left him alone to die. They make quite a pair, the two of them.

“Bravo, bravo!” Harry and Liam call, and when Louis looks over at him, he’s immensely relieved to see that Harry is wearing his shirt still.

Niall and Louis clasp hands and take a bow, and then Niall starts the next song and queues up a few to follow it. “What’s up, lads?” Niall asks as he and Louis jump down from the platform and come to stand next to Harry and Liam.

“Just came to see our two favorite superstars,” Harry teases.

“Couldn’t let the two of you perform for just an audience of kids, after all,” Liam adds. “Needed some adult representation.”

“Excuse me, Liam. I hardly think you’re an adult.”

Liam frowns. “Harold, if you must know, I technically am. And also I’m older than you.”

“By like, five months. That barely counts.”

“It does too!”

Niall and Louis both look at each other and roll their eyes. “Would the two of you shut up?” Niall interrupts when Harry’s mid-sentence. Louis smiles because Niall’s acting like the two of them hadn’t just had this exact same conversation ten minutes ago.

“Fine, whatever.” Liam says petulantly.

  
“Anyway. I just came to tell you all that it’s supposed to be my hour in the dunk tank in ten minutes so, you know, if you like, want to come along, I’ll be there.” Harry announces, and when he makes eye contact with Louis, he raises his eyebrows just a tiny bit.

Louis doesn’t mean to do it, but his eyes fall to the swimming trunks again, and now that he’s getting a better look at them, one where he’s not quite so taken aback by them (though honestly, he’ll likely always be taken aback by something that skimpy on Harry, or anything on Harry in general) he can appreciate how lovely Harry’s thighs look in them. It’s like…they’re very much an incredibly muscular pair of thighs, and Louis is going to appreciate them any chance he gets. The fact that the shorts are about eight inches long and reach to the top part of Harry’s thighs make that appreciation very easy.

“You coming, Lou?” Harry asks, his voice light because he _knows_.

“Yeah,” Louis answers as he tries to swallow, his throat scratchy and dry. “I’m coming.”

*

Louis doesn't get to be first in line. He’s third. Sara and Mallory are ahead of him. How the hell they found out about Harry’s time slot ahead of Louis, he has no clue, but they did and they've presented the tickets he gave them earlier to Annie, who’s working the dunk tank station and looks all too happy to squeal over Harry with them.

“Look at all his tattoos,” Sara whispers to Mallory.

“I know. Also have you seen the ship tattoo? I mean how could you miss it? But that one’s my favorite.”

“What about those laurels though?” Annie adds, and honestly, damn her. Louis has never had anything against her but right now she’s earning herself a place on his hit list. “Do you think those hurt?”

He wants to lean over to her and say, “Is that really appropriate? Do we really want to be encouraging underage girls to be lusting over adults?” But he knows they're going to do it either way, and he can't refute any of their points anyway.

“I've always wanted a tattoo,” Mallory muses as Harry takes off his shirt and climbs into the tank. He’s all muscles and tanned skin and it's very distracting. “Maybe like flowers or something?”

“That'd be nice,” Sara confirms, and Harry calls to Annie that he’s ready when they are.

A quick game of rock papers scissors decides that Sara gets to go first. Annie hands her the three tennis balls. Her first throw is way off base, her second hits the edge of the target, and her third hits the third innermost circle. No luck. It needs to hit the button at the very middle in order to activate the mechanism that will dunk Harry.

“That's okay, I'll just try again after Louis.”

Mallory’s luck is about the same; her second throw looks like it's going to hit the center circle but curves at the last second.

She sighs heavily. “Louis, if you dunk him before one of us gets to, I'm going to be really upset.” Louis just laughs; he can't exactly tell her that he has a special interested in beating her at dunking Harry first, so he plays it cool. “We’ll see about that.”

Harry gives him a smirk when he lines up to throw his first pitch. Just as Louis pulls his arm back, Harry bites his lip. He looks genuinely a bit nervous. Good. Serves him right.

The ball hits just to the left of the target. When he goes to throw his second, he makes the mistake of looking at Harry just before he throws. Harry’s shifting in his seat, spreading his legs a little wider. Fuck. It throws Louis off balance and the pitch doesn't even come close.

“You suck!” Louis tells to Harry’s answering grin.

“Try harder!”

The third time, Louis makes sure to not look at Harry at all. His goal is the target, and only the target. He tries to forget that Harry’s even there; he won’t be distracted again. When he throws, the ball makes contact with the center panel. _Success_. There's a split second where he looks at Harry and sees pure panic in his eyes. And then his seat falls and he gets dunked in the water.

Louis, Annie and the other kids who’ve gathered to watch are cheering. Sara and Mallory look pissed; Louis wants to go over and pat their heads and tell them it's gonna be okay. He’s too busy mentally celebrating his victory.

When Harry emerges, he's pointing at Louis. “I'm gonna get you, Tomlinson. Watch your back.” He's grinning though, his hair plastered to his head in twelve directions, and Louis can't help but grin back.

“Yeah, we’ll see about that!”

*

Harry’s still wearing the trunks and shirt at dinner that night. “Can you - can we -” Louis starts when he pulls him aside before they get their food.

“Boathouse. After lights out?”  

Louis nods. “Better keep those shorts on, Styles.”

“Wouldn't dream of letting anyone but you take them off.”

*

God, Harry is the most beautiful human he's ever had the pleasure of kissing. Probably the most beautiful human ever, period, case closed. Everyone else can give up, people should just close up shop and go home, maybe the people of the world can even stop having kids, because they'll never achieve better. No one else has lips as pink as Harry does, no one has green eyes like Harry does. There’s just no one else out there like him; Harry’s the prettiest of them all.

Louis drags Harry by the hand into the boathouse, pulling him close and pushing him against the wall. He crowds up against him, slotting his thighs in between Harry’s. He drops his hands to rest on Harry’s shoulders and leans in for a kiss, capturing Harry’s mouth with his own.

“Hi,” Harry murmurs after a few minutes of soft, quiet, kissing, the very thing Louis has wanted all day. Louis can feel him smiling.

“Hey.”

“I missed you,” Harry confesses. Louis pulls back just enough so that his vision is confined to Harry’s face as the moonlight streams through the open door of the boathouse. It lights up his whole face, letting Louis see the grin there despite the fact that the rest of the boathouse is dark. There isn’t much room in there. They’re crowded into a corner next to a stack of pool floaties, but there’s room enough for them both to make out which is all that Louis cares about right now.

“You were with me all day!” Louis protests, but he’s smiling as he presses his thumb into Harry’s dimple. Harry grins around it, and then wraps his fingers around Louis' wrist to force Louis to look at him.

“Yeah, well maybe I just missed doing this.” He leans in for a kiss, and his mouth is light on Louis', a soft brush of lips that Louis returns easily. After a minute or two, Louis nips at Harry’s lower lip and Harry gives a quiet little yelp.

“Sorry,” Louis says, in a tone that conveys that he’s not sorry at all.

“You’re not. You like torturing me,” Harry whispers.

Louis scoffs. “You’re one to talk, what with you-” he pulls up Harry’s shirt to expose a sliver of skin on his stomach and slips two fingers into the space between Harry’s hipbone and the waistband of his shorts, resting them there “-wearing these stupidly short shorts all day just to turn me on.”

“Did it work?” Harry asks with a smug grin.

“Yeah, I think it worked,” Louis answers as he presses himself closer and rolls his hips upward against Harry’s. He won't tell Harry this, never ever, but those skimpy yellow shorts will probably fuel his fantasies for months.

“If you keep doing that we’re gonna be in trouble in about thirty seconds,” Harry murmurs as Louis rocks up against him and presses sloppy kisses to the side of his neck. Harry’s hands are on Louis' waist, gripping the thin material of his t-shirt as he tilts his head so Louis can reach better.

“Define trouble,” Louis says, as he pulls his fingers out of Harry’s waistband and splays his fingers on Harry’s lower back under his t-shirt. The skin there is warm and smooth. His free hand comes up to tangle in the curls at the back of Harry’s head as he makes his way down Harry’s neck, dropping kisses as he goes.

“Trouble as in-” he cuts himself off with a groan as Louis slides his palm lower, resting it beneath his waistband just above the cleft of his arse “-I’m gonna be hard in like, fifteen seconds.”

“Mm, I thought that was the point?” Louis asks as he starts licking at the other side of Harry’s jaw. He tastes a bit like salt and sweat, his neck hot from being warmed by the sun all day.

“It is, if you’d ever just fucking get on with it-” Harry starts, but then he’s groaning, practically _whimpering_ as Louis sucks at his neck, not quite hard enough to leave a mark (he’s not _stupid_ ) and snaps his hips up against Harry’s again. Harry’s rocking against him, little movements that he doesn’t even seem to notice he’s doing, sliding his hands up and down Louis' sides under his t-shirt. Harry’s hands are warm, his fingertips rough, the sensations making Louis shiver.

“Lou, _please_ ,” Harry gets out as he brings his hands to grope at Louis' arse, and this time it’s Louis that’s groaning. “You like that?” He teases, voice light.

“Are you really trying to _dirty talk_ me right now, Styles?” Louis asks, stepping out of Harry’s grasp entirely. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Trying to seduce me by complimenting my arse?”

“Louis, as gorgeous as your arse is, I swear if you don’t fucking do something in the next ten seconds I am going to take off these clothes myself,” Harry promises, and he starts to pull his shirt up above his head.

“No.” Louis orders, his voice rough. Those fucking laurel tattoos, honestly. Harry has to know how much they affect him, the bastard. “I’ll do it.”

“Well, get on with it then,” Harry demands, and he drops his hands from the bottom of his t-shirt and leans up against the wall, his body language open and casual, as if to say he’s ready for the taking and _what the hell are you waiting for, come on_. Louis just looks, letting his eyes take in the way his t-shirt clings to his hips, how the shorts cut off at the upper part of his thighs. Louis swallows hard at the sight of them, muscular and toned and tan. “Stop staring at me.”

“You _like_ that I’m staring at you, you _know_ it’s a compliment, stop being a pain in the arse,” Louis snaps.

In response, Harry just pulls at the waistband of his shorts, goes to pull them down, and Louis can see the strip of skin where his tanline starts. He’s much paler below it, golden brown above, and the sight of that, the tanline just below his hip, sets him into motion.

He launches himself toward Harry, crushing his mouth to Harry’s and pushing in close so that there’s no space between them.

“Off, off, off,” Louis manages as he tugs at Harry’s shirt. He slips his other hand under it and tugs at Harry’s nipple, smirking against Harry’s mouth at the way he reacts, hips rocking against Louis' as he moans. Louis yanks Harry’s shirt up to his armpits and then pulls off his mouth for the ten seconds it takes to get the shirt up and over Harry’s head. Louis flings the shirt behind him, where it hits the floor with a soft sound he barely hears. He drops kisses down Harry’s jaw, on his neck, across his collarbone. He brings one hand up to twist at Harry’s other nipple and the other hand on Harry’s shoulder, the skin beneath his palm hot and warm. With his shirt off there’s so much more of Harry to explore, his body a blank canvas dotted with tattoos, and Louis wants to kiss every inch.

Harry keeps groaning in his ear, making these little whimpering noises as he rocks himself against Louis' thigh and he’s going to drive Louis over the edge soon if they’re not careful. “Lou - Lou, please,” he gets out, and Louis stands up straight from where he’d been bending down to suck at the skin at the middle of his butterfly tattoo (Louis is truly going to die) to hook his hands around Harry’s neck and stare at him.

“What do you want?” He asks softly, keeping his eyes locked with Harry’s. “What do you want from me?”

“Lou - your mouth, please, please, Lou, come on,” Harry gets out, and he looks like he’s about to cry in desperation. Louis takes pity on him then, helpless to deny Harry anything for too long, especially not when he feels himself just minutes from coming as well. He hooks his fingers below the waistband of Harry’s shorts and tugs, pulling them down and letting Harry kick them away.

 _Jesus Christ_. Harry’s bare below his swim trunks, hadn’t been wearing anything underneath, and sweet Jesus Louis feels like he’s about to keel over and die. Louis lets out a whine, then, actually _whines_ at the sight of Harry hard and ready for him. His mouth waters, and he’s done this many times, been on his knees for a lot of pretty boys before, but none of them have made him feel the way Harry does. None of them have had him so close to coming before they’ve even touched him.

Louis drops to his knees and grips Harry at the base of his cock, giving it a few tugs before wrapping his mouth around the head of it and sucking gently. He gets lost in it for a few minutes, Harry whimpering above him, and it’s not until he hums around Harry’s cock and Harry’s hands fly down to grasp at his hair that he comes back to awareness of the moment.

“Lou, Louis, please, oh God, please, yes, Louis, please,” Harry’s stammering, absolutely babbling, and Louis probably shouldn’t be surprised by that, Harry never shuts up in an ordinary situation, why would it be any different during sex? But he’s pulling at Louis' hair all the same and Louis finds that he likes it, likes the pain of it, likes making Harry react like this.

He licks at Harry’s slit, stroking the base with his free hand, other hand gripping at Harry’s hip to hold him close as he sucks and licks for a few more minutes. Harry’s keening then, absolutely making these wild noises and Louis is starting to wonder if he has some kind of exhibitionism kink, if he’s suddenly as aware as Louis is that they’re protected within the boathouse and it’s late at night but anyone could walk by, and - _shit_. The whole thing is wet and messy and Louis has never been this turned on from giving someone a blowjob before. It’s him making Harry sound like that, and the thought makes Louis feel a bit woozy.

“Lou, Lou, I’m gonna-” Harry gets out, and Louis wraps his mouth around the head of Harry’s cock again just as Harry jerks his hips forward, spasms, and then he’s coming in Louis' mouth, spilling down his throat with his hands at Louis' shoulders.

“Lou,” Harry whimpers as Louis swallows and looks up at him, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He’s wet and filthy but Harry pulls him up by the arms anyway, pressing their mouths together forcefully. “You’re so perfect, Louis, so perfect and gorgeous, thank you, thank you,” he babbles. He slips his hand down Louis shorts, yanks down his pants, and it only takes a few strokes before Louis is coming all over Harry’s hand. Harry kisses him through it, kisses the breath out of him, kisses him until he’s dizzy with it.

“Next time,” Harry whispers, “I want it to be me sucking you off.”

Louis collapses against Harry’s shoulder with a whimper and the only thing in his brain is the soft press of _Harry, Harry, Harry_.

*

“Why are you being a grump this morning?” Liam asks as he takes a sip of his coffee at breakfast the next day. He grimaces as he swallows, like maybe it was too hot. Good, he deserves it.

“I’m not being a grump,” Louis retorts, and Liam raises his eyebrows. Fine, Louis is definitely being a grump.

“No really, what's wrong?”

“Nothing, I don't want to talk about it, I'm fine.” Louis says morosely as he swallows a bite of cereal.

“Does this have anything to do with you coming back to bed at two in the morning?” Liam pushes, and yep, Louis absolutely does not want to talk about this.

“Shut up and eat your cereal,” Louis orders, pointing to Liam’s bowl with his own spoon.

“No, but really. What were you doing, having a wank in the showers?”

Louis goes very, very still. What does Liam know? “No, _Liam_ , I was not.”

Liam ignores him and continues his own train of thought. “Because like, we all have needs. So if you want to do that, no judgment. And actually, the shower on the far left-”

Louis claps his hands over his ears. “Ew, Liam, stop. There are children around. Children who _shower_ in there. I don't need to hear about your wanking habits.”

“Fine,” Liam concedes, hands up. “So if you weren't having a wank, what were you doing?”

“I don't know, Liam, probably went to the loo!” Louis is starting to raise his voice now; he wishes Liam had just left him to wallow alone.

The real reason Louis is grumpy is because Harry is nowhere to be found. Zayn and Niall are both missing as well and Louis has no idea where any of them could be; Harry hadn't said anything last night.

And it’s not like they can trade kisses at the breakfast table or anything, but Louis likes it when they play footsie under the table and share secret smiles. Except for how it had been sufficiently awkward that time Louis had hooked his ankle around Niall’s by accident and then had to pretend he was trying to kick him. But after last night, Louis kind of just wants to see Harry, wants to be back in his radius.

“You couldn't have gone to the loo, I woke up around one in the morning and you were gone and then I woke up when you came back close to half two! What do you have, some kind of infection? Might want to get that checked out, mate.”

“Liam, I don't realize you were so concerned with my sleeping habits. I'll try to keep you more updated next time.” He knows he’s been snarky, and he’d probably feel worse about it if not for how annoyed he feels.

“Fine,” he sighs, “I promised her I wouldn't tell but I guess if you're not going to stop then I'll just tell you. I went for a wee but then when I left the loo I saw one of Eleanor’s campers sitting on the rocks under the trees, and she was crying. Really homesick, some kind of boy drama. So I was helping her through it.”

“What?” Liam asks, alarmed. “Did you tell Eleanor? Who was it? She really shouldn't have been out of bed at that time, that's not safe. There’s some scary stuff out there.” He turns his head to look around the room, presumably to find Eleanor and tell her about the fictional boy troubles of this fictional camper. It’s a wonder he hasn’t more acting jobs, he’s brilliant at this whole thing, honestly.

“Relax, Liam. The only scary things around here are the bears and you when you don't get enough sleep. Now shut up and eat your cereal.”

*

Louis is going to warn Harry that Liam had noticed he was gone last night, but then he loses all semblance of thought when he walks into the art room and sees Niall.

Niall, who’s got purple hair.

“It's lilac, actually,” Zayn supplies helpfully when Louis voices this observation aloud.

“Nialler, what did you do?” Louis asks as he runs his fingers experimentally through the tips of Niall’s hair. “How do we fix this?”

“It’s for a bet,” Niall shrugs at the same time Harry adds, “I quite like the hair, actually, think it suits you. Was time for a change anyway, yeah?”

“You _would_ think that,” Louis says to Harry. It's the first time they've made direct eye contact since last night. Harry gives him a little grin, and Louis flushes at the memory of having Harry’s cock in his mouth. Would like to repeat it again soon, if he could.

“The kids in our cabin bet him a hundred dollars that he wouldn’t dye his hair purple,” Harry tells Louis and _ah,_ things make a lot more sense now. That explains why the kids had asked him the other day how much money they needed to spend to go to the waterpark next week. Louis had had to gently break the news to them that no, unfortunately you couldn’t stand on a friend’s shoulders and say you were just one person in order to get a cheaper ticket. Inventive idea, though.

“Mate, how many times do I have to tell you?” Zayn asks, affronted. “It’s _lilac._ ”

“Well, whatever color it is, the campers are gonna have a field day with it.” Louis says. “You’re not actually gonna take their money though, right?”

“Course I am!” Niall protests as he gets up out of the chair and towels off his hair. “I earned that money fair and square. Wouldn’t risk this kind of embarrassment for nothin’, mate.”

“Nialler, they’re kids. Isn’t the entertainment value of making them laugh enough for you?” Louis asks.

“Fine. I’ll buy them all ice cream or something.” Niall throws the towel at him, and Louis blinks in surprise as he catches it with one hand.

“I’m just saying, think of the kids,” Louis advises, and Niall sticks his tongue out at him as they leave the art room to go supervise their respective lessons.

*

Louis is right, the kids do indeed have a field day with it. They can’t believe he’s actually gone through with it, all of them clamoring to touch it. A few of them even ask if they can dye their own. They all beg Niall to take selfies with them on their disposable cameras, and Niall obliges.

“How about a group shot?” Louis asks, motioning for all the kids in cabin 16 to squish together. “Zayn, Hazza, get in there too.”

Harry has to pull Zayn into the frame with him (“Mate, come on, it’s just one photo, don’t be shy.”) but Louis catches him smiling as a camper wraps his arms around him and says, “Zayn, you’re my favorite.” When Louis calls for a silly photo, Harry crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue, and Louis feels his heart grow a little more fond.

Simon though, isn’t so impressed with the hair. “Mr. Horan, you would do well to remember that this is a summer camp, not a circus. I hope you’ll be able to wash that out soon.” Sometimes, Louis feels like Simon is as bad as Professor Snape from _Harry Potter_.

Niall’s hair dye stays in for a week.

*

A soft hand on his shoulder wakes Louis up from a doze one early morning a week later. “Did you really just fall asleep on me?” Harry asks, and Louis shakes his head. They’re sitting on the dock, the sky brightening around them. “I was gone for like, four minutes.”

“Of course not,” Louis answers, but he’s yawning as he says it. He covers his mouth and rolls his eyes at Harry’s knowing smile. “Shut up.”

“If you’re going to be mean to me then I’ll just drink both cups of tea by myself,” Harry teases.

“No, gimme,” Louis answers, already reaching for the tea. Harry indulges him and hands it over, and even the first sip makes Louis feel a bit more alert. “Thank you,” he breathes, and leans in to give Harry a quick kiss.

“You’re welcome,” Harry says when they break apart, and he scooches in closer so that his left hip and thigh are flush with Louis' right side. Louis lays his head on Harry’s shoulder. They both take sips of their tea and gaze out over the lake. A flock of birds chirps from the trees and already, the sky is much brighter than when they arrived.

“I gotta ask though, why are we doing this again?” Louis asks after a few quiet minutes, minus the sound of his feet splashing in the lake. Though, that’s probably not the best idea, now that he thinks about it. It’s too dark to see what’s in there. There could be like, fish that bite him or something.

Harry just laughs when Louis mentions the possible biting fish. “I told you; I’ve always wanted to watch a sunrise over a lake.”

“And you brought me along at 5 in the morning for what reason?” Louis asks, but he’s mostly joking.

“Because I wanted to spend time with you without other people around,” Harry answers softly, and his tone is surprisingly honest. It makes something twist low in Louis' gut, sharp and quick.

“Thought it’d be proper romantic, did you?” Louis teases. Harry wraps his free hand around Louis' waist and squeezes in response, presses a kiss to Louis' temple with a smile.

“Do you think we’re doing the wrong thing?” Louis asks, taking his head off Harry’s shoulder. “You know, by lying to the lads?”

Harry looks thoughtful for a moment. “I mean, we’re not really _lying_ to them, are we? More like omitting the truth.”

“I feel like we’re lying to them,” Louis answers. Harry sighs heavily, and then Louis feels bad. This was supposed to be romantic, the two of them watching the sunrise together, and now he’s gone and ruined it before the day’s even really begun. “Actually, you know what? We can talk about this another time. I don’t mean to ruin this. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’ve been thinking about it too.” Harry pauses for a long moment. “I mean, like, I guess I just figured it’d sort itself out, you know? But it hasn’t yet.”

Louis makes a small noise of agreement, and then sets down his empty cup next to him on the dock. He lays down with his legs still dangling over the water. He motions for Harry to join him, and he does, lying perpendicular so that he can use Louis' stomach as a pillow.

It’s Harry who speaks first. “This whole sneaking around thing, like…it was never my intention, yeah? Like, we didn’t mean to do it. But it happened, and well -” his voice takes on a teasing tone as he cranes his head to look at Louis' face “- it’s kinda fun, isn’t it?”

Louis thinks of the lack of sleep he’s been getting this summer, the vague sense of unease he feels every time he thinks Liam’s onto them, the fear that Simon might catch them and send them home. But then he thinks of late nights at the boathouse, getting each other off in the art room, sneaking into bathrooms to trade kisses while pressed against the wall. He thinks of Harry’s bright smile that he sees every day, the games of footsie they play at mealtimes that no one else knows about, the way Harry settles Louis and makes him feel like things will be okay.

“Yeah, it’s kinda fun,” Louis admits as he leans down to drop a soft kiss to Harry’s forehead.

*

“What the fuck are the two of you doing? What’s going on here?”

Louis opens one eye in the morning sun to see Niall standing above them, glaring. He nudges Harry. “Haz, get off. Wake up. Harry.”

“What time is it?” Louis asks sleepily. Harry rolls over onto his stomach so that his chin is resting on Louis' stomach. Louis nudges him again, and he sits up at a speed that’s approximately the same as a glacier. _Harry, please, for the love of God, get on with it._

“Morning, Niall,” Harry greets, giving Niall a cheeky wave. In return, he gets a stern frown from Niall.

“Just after eight,” Niall answers, “so you’ve still got time for breakfast if you hurry up.”

They both rise to their feet, and Louis bends down to pick up the empty mugs that had held their tea. Harry’s collar is askew and his hair is going in five different directions; Louis wants to reach out and fix both, wants to bring Harry back into proper alignment, but he doesn’t think now is the best time for that.

“And again, I ask,” Niall continues, arms crossed. “What the fuck’s going on here?”

Harry’s head flies to look at Louis, and Louis can see the panic in his eyes. Louis knows that both of them are shit liars, but Harry’s absolutely awful.

“Harry wanted to watch the sunrise,” Louis begins, taking one for the team. Honesty seems like the best policy here, in spite of the fact that it sounds weak even to his own ears.

“And he asked you to come?” Niall’s eyebrow is raised.

“He asked me to come,” Louis confirms.

“Why didn’t ya invite the rest of us, then, huh?” Niall asks, turning to Harry and poking him in the chest.

“Niall, ow,” Harry complains, rubbing his fingertips over the spot. “Why do you always do that to me, it hurts.”

“Stop being a baby and tell me what happened!”

Louis fights the urge to roll his eyes; why does Niall care so much, why are all their friends so annoying sometimes, why do the two of them put up with this nonsense? Honestly it would be so much easier if they knew; they'd have a little more freedom to sneak around if the lads could cover for them sometimes. They'd just have to put up with a lifetime of teasing and Niall gloating about how right he was for the rest of eternity.

“Well I didn't _mean_ for him to come,” Harry explains, and Louis’ eyes widen. Harry shouldn’t bother trying to lie; Niall will just get more suspicious. Plus, it's not like they really did anything to apologize for; they were just kissing. God, this whole thing is really making him paranoid.

“I went to get tea,” Harry continues, “and I saw Louis wandering the camp. Looked like he was sleepwalking. Thought he might be at risk of falling into the lake if I didn't look out for him. And here we are.”

Niall narrows his eyes. “So why were the two of you all-” he waves his arms around “-tangled up in each other?”

“Can we please go to breakfast?” Louis asks loudly. “I'm hungry.”

“No, I want an answer!” Niall crosses his arms again and paired with his frown, he looks like their petulant child who’s mad that his dads won't give him cookies before dinner.

“We fell asleep, I guess,” Harry says with a shrug, and Louis can see that the answer still doesn't appease Niall.

“But _why_?”

“We woke up early, we watched the sunrise, I guess we were tired?” Harry replies, almost like a question, and Niall frowns again.

“I’m done with this, I'm going to get food,” Louis announces, and he leaves the two of them behind on the dock as he storms up to the dining hall.

*

Louis does his best to avoid Niall the rest of the day, which isn’t too difficult because he’s sent to bring a group of campers to learn archery. It’s normally Sophia’s job, but she’s feeling ill today and Harry had volunteered Louis to take her place. Louis had protested, because despite having an arrow tattoo for the past few years, he’s literally never touched a bow and arrow in his life. Harry had insisted he’d be fine.

It’s not going well.

“You just pull this bit here,” Louis coaches, and Noah does as he’s told. But when he releases the arrow, it launches into the air and lands about ten feet to the right of the target.

“I told you, I can’t do it! I don’t know how, and I’m awful at this!” Noah cries, throwing the bow on the ground and turning away. Louis sighs heavily. This is not what he expected this morning when he woke up to watch the sunrise. Today is just getting worse and worse.

“No, Noah, look,” Louis tries, but Noah just takes a seat on a bench nearby, pouting.

“I won’t!” He cries when Louis coaxes him to get up and try one more time. He crosses his arms and for the second time today, Louis feels like he’s dealing with a petulant child. Except for that this one is actually a child, unlike Niall, so it’s a little more forgivable. “I’m terrible at this,” Noah continues.

Part of Louis wants to tell him to stop complaining and give it another shot, but part of him also remembers being a thirteen year old boy and feeling like he wasn’t great at anything. He knows someone pushing him wouldn’t have helped.

“Noah, you’re not terrible,” Louis offers, “maybe we can just get someone who’s better at it than I am to help you.” It just makes Noah more upset.

“What’s wrong?”

Louis turns around, and Harry’s standing behind them, a concerned look on his face. Noah jumps up when he sees him, and runs to him, enveloping him in a big hug. Harry bents down, and strokes Noah’s hair.

“Hey buddy, what’s wrong?”

“I suck at archery. I was bad last time and I’m bad this time too. I’m never gonna hit the target.”

Harry pulls back and places his hands on Noah’s shoulder. “I promise you, you can do it. Why don’t we get Eleanor to help you, she does this every week, she’s really good at it.”

Noah nods and wipes his sniffly nose with the back of his hand. “Okay.”

“You can do it,” Harry promises. “You’re important and you’re smart, okay? I’ve seen you scoring goals in soccer, I’ve seen you swim to the dock at the lake and back, you can do this too. It just takes practice. Like, you know how to ride a bike, right?”

Noah nods. “Yeah.”

“So it’s like that. That took a while, this might take a while too. But you’ll get there.”

Louis feels a bit invasive, like he’s witnessing something he probably shouldn’t be seeing. He also can’t make himself look away, because Harry comforting kids is something he didn’t know would make his heart feel so much. It makes him feel like he’s being stabbed with little knives, but in a way that he weirdly likes. He feels like his heart is expanding and soon there’ll be no more room left in his chest.

He knows then, sharply, and like nothing he’s ever known before, that this thing with Harry is more than just hooking up. It’s more than just having someone to trade jokes with, it’s more than making out in secret, it’s more than for the summer. At least for him. Louis doesn’t know how Harry feels about it, really, but Louis knows, as he's sitting there watching Noah and Harry, that he’s falling for him.

He wants to take Harry home to meet his mum. He wants to see him interacting with his little sisters. He wants to take Harry to the cinema and snog him in the back row throughout the entire film. He just wants Harry, period.

The realization is terrifying. But it’s liberating, too.

*

“I'm sorry about this morning,” Harry says as he and Louis scoop freshly popped popcorn into little bowls for movie night later that night. It smells so good, nice and warm and buttery, and Louis can't help but steal a piece and pop it into his own mouth.

“Stop, those are for the kids,” Harry chastises as he swats Louis' hand away. “Though I guess you're basically a child, so you can have a few,” he amends.

“Hey!” Louis challenges, voice high. “I am not. I’m older than you.”

“Physically,” Harry concedes, “you are. But mentally, I am older. And you know it.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Louis says with a fond shake of his head. God, he’ll probably never get over Harry teasing him, will probably never stop loving how they banter all the time.

“You don’t have to apologize though,” Louis continues. “Not your fault.”

“I feel bad that Niall showed up and ruined our morning and made you grumpy,” Harry explains.

“I’m sorry I let him.” Louis abandons his cup of popcorn and hooks his chin over Harry’s shoulder, resting his weight against Harry’s back as Harry tries to shake him off. After a moment he must realize he won’t be successful because he continues on scooping, albeit with a limited range of motion with Louis pressed up against him. “What’d you talk about when I left?”

“He asked me what’s going on between us. He’s very concerned about us getting together, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Louis laughs. He tosses another piece of popcorn into his mouth. “He asks me literally every day if we’ve kissed yet.”

“I told him we were just friends,” Harry continues. “And he said something like ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. But I can see the love in your eyes. The two of you are meant for each other.’ Honestly, it’s like he’s more concerned about us getting together than we are.”

“It’s weird, right?” Louis asks, pulling himself off of Harry and leaning back against the counter. “Like, why is he so concerned about us getting together?”

“Probably just jealous that he’s not getting laid,” Harry jokes, and he drops three pieces of popcorn into Louis' waiting mouth. “But like, it’s getting really irritating.”

Louis hums in agreement. “And like, we’re already together.”

“ _Together_ , together?” Harry asks, looking up in surprise. Louis feels himself flush. Fuck. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that.

“Uh, I mean…do you want to be _together_ , together?” He stammers. Harry sets his most recent cup of popcorn on the counter and turns to step in front of Louis. He grabs both of his hands and laces their fingers together.

“Lou,” he starts, and _oh fuck_ , Louis has ruined this entire thing, this was just a bit of fun for Harry and Louis was the only one falling and he’s going to get his heart broken. “I know this hasn’t been the most conventional thing between us. But I like you _a lot_ , and I don’t want to say goodbye to you in a few weeks when we go home. I want to take you out to dinner and kiss you in front of other people and call you my boyfriend.”

Louis lets out a shaky breath in relief. “Oh. Okay. I can be your boyfriend.” He laughs, and Harry looks worried, teeth pressed down on his lower lip.

“Did you think you weren’t already?” Harry asks, and he sounds curious more than anything as he brings one hand up to squeeze Louis' shoulder.

“I mean, I don’t know.” Louis tries to hide his embarrassment. Why is he embarrassed? It’s an unfamiliar feeling when he’s around Harry, because Harry’s usually the one who puts him at ease, makes him breathe a little easier. “I didn’t know what this was, really. Thought maybe you were just having fun.”

Harry laughs, and then he kisses Louis quickly. “Lou, no. This is more than just a bit of fun for me. I mean like, it’s fun too, but...I like you, I like you very much a lot, and I’d really like you to be my secret boyfriend.”

“Secret boyfriend?” Louis asks, eyebrows raised. “Is there another one I should be worried about?”

“My secret boyfriend who will one day soon not be a secret,” Harry clarifies. “Would you please? There’s only a couple weeks left, and then we won’t have to see each other in secret anymore. Because I kinda just want to hang out with you all the time, if I can.”

“I’d love to,” Louis says with a smile. “It’s mutual.”

*

“Well, if he’s not gonna be back in time what are you gonna do?” Zayn asks, and Louis wants to smack him.

“Zayn, will you quit asking me about it, I don’t know what to do!” Louis cries as he paces the backstage area of the small theater space on the campground.

“Well, the sets are all painted, I dunno what to tell you. That’s all I was worried about.”

“Yes, Zayn, I get it, your part is done, I’m very happy for you.” Louis' tone is biting and sarcastic, but he can’t find it in himself to be concerned about that right now, not when he’s got a show to worry about.

“Lou, I don’t know what to tell you,” Zayn answers with a heavy sigh. “I can try to help you, but not if you’re gonna be an arse about it.”

Louis stops his pacing to look at Zayn. His voice was sharp, like he’s actually been offended. That’s how Louis knows he screwed up, because it takes a lot to anger Zayn. Louis has probably seen him mad only two other times the whole summer, once when a group of his campers chopped off a bit of his hair in the middle of the night and the other when someone made misogynistic comments about one of the campers in the boys’ loo.

“Zayn, listen,” Louis pleads, trying to recover, but the damage has been done.

“No, you know what, Louis? I’m gonna go find Liam and hang out with him, because he’s probably not being an arsehole like you are right now.” He leaves before Louis can do anything else about it.

“Fuck,” Louis exhales into the quiet of the room, and he takes a seat on a set of stairs that’s going to be used for the performance later. He drops his head into his hands and lets out a long sigh. He sits there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what the hell he’s going to do.

“Lou?” Harry’s voice is quiet, a bit uncertain. Louis looks up to see him standing at the doorway, hovering as if he’s not sure he should enter. “You okay?”

“No,” Louis admits quietly.

“Want some company?” Harry asks, and he comes into the room when Louis nods. He takes a seat on the step next to Louis.

“What’s wrong?”

“The lead in my cabin’s act got taken to the hospital this morning and he’s not going to be back in time,” Louis says angrily. “I don’t know what to do, my whole act is going to be a mess.”

“What about Liam?” Harry asks carefully. “Can’t he help you figure something out?”

“We split up the kids ten and ten,” Louis explains, his tone still stressed. “He’s got his own act to worry about.”

Harry places a gentle hand on Louis' knee, which causes him to look up. “What?” Louis snaps, and Harry just shakes his head.

“Look,” Louis starts as he pulls away from Harry and gets up off the steps to pace the room. “I appreciate you coming here to like, calm me down or whatever, but neither of us can do anything. So like, I’d rather just sit there and be mad.”

Harry just nods. “Alright. Is it cool if I just hang out here then?”

Louis' eyes fly to him in surprise. Harry looks thoughtful, but not angry. It's not the reaction Louis was anticipating. Struck mute, Louis nods once and paces the room three times.

“He's in the hospital and he's got the script for the main character, the one with all the major notes, he's practiced so much, I just don't think anyone else could do it on such short notice,” Louis rambles. Harry doesn't say a word, and that's unnerving.

Louis stops in the middle of the room and throws his hands up into the air. “Fine. Let's talk about it.”

Harry grins slyly, and God, he's such a bastard, he's the worst. Louis should probably feel uncomfortable that Harry can read him so well. He should probably feel unsettled that Harry’s presence has made him steadier in the few minutes he's been here than he’s been all day. Just another tick in the “Harry is possibly magic” column.

“Okay, here’s what you should do,” Harry begins, and he stands up to stand in front of Louis and run his hands up and down his arms. Louis listens intently and tries not to think about how soft Harry’s lips are.

Fifteen minutes later they have a plan, Harry’s stolen a kiss, and Zayn is amazed.

“What the hell did you do, mate?” Zayn asks, eyes wide as he sees Louis' calm demeanor.

Harry shrugs and Louis throws an arm around his shoulder in thanks. “Think he might be magic,” Louis explains before he skips away.

*

“That was incredible, you're incredible, thank you so much,” Louis says through kisses.

Harry groans low in his throat as his back hits the door of the bathroom stall, slamming it closed. “Mhm, you're welcome.”

Louis’ hands come up to Harry’s cheeks, squeezing his face between his hands as he deepens the kiss. He pulls away and regards Harry seriously for a moment. “No really, you’re brilliant, I can’t believe you thought of reworking the production to center on an offstage character instead. It worked so well. Thank you so much, you’re amazing.”

He drops kisses to Harry’s chin and down the side of his neck, presses them into Harry’s collarbones, brings his fingers to open the buttons on Harry’s shirt so that he can kiss the bare skin beneath.

“What are you doin’ Lou?” Harry manages, but he drops his head back to hit against the door and arches his back to lean into Louis’ kisses.

“I’m thanking you properly,” Louis explains as he sucks at Harry’s nipple. It’s a dirty move, especially when they’re in public, but it’s one he knows from experience will get Harry going in no time.

“I don’t think-” Harry cuts himself off as he lets out a little moan at the feeling of Louis' mouth pulling off him with a slurping noise “-that this is the best idea. The show just ended, anyone could walk in.”

“Why don’t you-” Louis boops Harry’s nose with his index finger “-worry about that later, and let me make you feel good.”

“Okay,” Harry concedes easily, his body pliant under Louis’ touch as Louis goes to undo his belt. “I mean, I did work very hard.”

His voice is light and teasing, and Louis works his way back up Harry’s chest to press his mouth to Harry’s in response. “Yes, you did,” Louis acknowledges, lightly scratching Harry’s nipple with a fingernail. Harry moans. “Now shut up and let me thank you.”

They’re kissing properly then, getting lost in each other for the first time all day, and Harry’s mouth is wet and warm against his and it’s all he can concentrate on.

“I dunno, mate, do you really think they’re in here still? They’ve been gone for ages. It only takes like fifteen seconds to wee.”

Both he and Harry freeze, eyes wide. It’s Liam. Louis pulls his mouth off Harry’s, but he’s hovering just centimeters away. The main door to the loo slams and of course they hadn’t heard it open, of course they had been preoccupied with kissing.

“What do we do?” Harry whispers, so quiet that Louis isn’t sure if Harry said it aloud or just mouthed the words.

“Hello?” Niall calls into the bathroom. “Anyone here?”

Louis face falls because _Jesus, fuck,_ of course it had to be Niall who’s with Liam. Of course. Niall’s been bugging them for the entire summer to get together, and now it’s early August and they’ve been hooking up for a month and Niall’s going to walk in on them in the loo.

Harry, frozen in place, suddenly grimaces and, _oh no,_ Louis knows that look. Harry shakes his head quickly and leans to the side and before either of them can do anything about it he lets out the biggest sneeze Louis has ever heard in his life.

Louis closes his eyes and drops his head against Harry’s shoulder because that’s it, they’re done for, they might as well say goodbye to their mums because Niall is absolutely going to murder them for not telling him they’re together.

“Harry?” Niall calls. “Harry, you in here?”

“Terrible fucking timing,” Louis mutters to Harry, but he’s not really _that_ mad. Surely Niall had to find out sometime.

“Didn’t that sound like a Harry sneeze to you?” Niall asks Liam, who makes a noise of agreement. Louis and Harry look at each other and share a small smile at that.

“I’ll come up with something,” Harry whispers. “Just follow my lead.”

“Harry,” Niall calls, a little angrier. “I can see your fucking gold boots in the stall there. I know you’re in here.”

“Who’s with you?” Liam asks suspiciously. “I can see a second pair of shoes.” There’s a long awkward pause where Harry and Louis are both frozen, breaths held, and the only sounds are those of Liam and Niall’s footsteps on the tile.

Louis and Harry are in the second to last stall, one of the extra large ones, and Louis is thankful for that as the door swings open. It means that he’s standing at one end of the stall while Harry stands at the other as Niall and Liam stand on the other side of the door, open mouthed. Louis' eyes fly to Harry’s shirt and thank God that boy has a habit of baring his chest to the world because he’d only gotten two buttons done up in the little warning time they’d had.

“What the fuck are the two of you doing?” Niall demands, and Louis has lost count of the number of times he’s asked him and Harry that very question. They probably need to stop secretly hooking up.

(They definitely won’t.)

“Uh, playing hide and seek with Louis' campers.” Harry explains, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Promised them we would if they behaved and did well in the talent show.”

“And they did!” Louis adds cheerily, pumping his fist in the air. “Woo!”

“But I guess the two of you have ruined it now,” Harry says morosely, “so Lou and I are just gonna go out and tell them they can stop looking.”

“Well, thanks for saving us,” Louis concludes. “We were getting pretty sick of staring at each other in there.”

Harry pulls Louis by the sleeve of his shirt and together they exit the loo, leaving Liam and Niall to stare at them in confusion.

*

“None of you know how to put up a tent,” Louis declares, hands on his hips. “Zayn, give me that. Harry, hand it over. We’re doing this the Tommo way.”

“Lou, have you ever actually _been_ camping before?” Niall asks, eyebrows raised. Louis gives him a look that he hopes says _Do not mess with me, or else_. “I didn’t think so.”

“Okay, fine, I have not indeed pitched a tent before,” Louis admits, and Harry lets out a sharp cackle at the obvious innuendo. Louis just smirks. “For camping,” he clarifies. “I haven’t pitched a tent for camping.”

Harry just laughs again, handing over the poles for one of the tents, and Niall rolls his eyes. “The two of you have been weird since the talent show. It’s been three days. Knock it off.”

“Harry’s always weird,” Louis retorts.

“No, both of you. The two of you have been like, extra weird.”

Louis rolls his eyes. “Whatever, Nialler. It’s all in your head, we’re not being any weirder than usual. Now hand me that tent so we can put this up before it gets dark.”

Harry refuses to hand his tent over. “I can figure it out, Louis.”

Louis just stares at him. “Harry, you might be good in the kitchen but you’re hopeless at putting up a tent, I’m sorry.”

“Heeyy,” Harry complains, the word drawn out long to convey maximum offense. Still, after a few minutes he hands over the materials and lets Louis and Liam try to make sense of it all.

Thirty minutes later, not without substantial struggle, the tents are up. There’s two of them, two three-person tents, and they draw straws to see who would get the extra space. Louis wins, and of course he picks Harry as his tent buddy.

“Good. The two of you are annoying me anyway, go be weird over there,” Niall complains, and while Louis is secretly thrilled that he’s going to get two nights of just Harry and him in a tent, he feels like Niall is genuinely annoyed at the moment.

Well, that’d have to be dealt with later.

*

“I still can’t believe the two of you kept this secret for that long,” Zayn says to Louis and Harry as they’re sitting around the campfire that evening and Harry admits he and Louis knew about this trip for a few weeks. “You should’ve told us the minute Simon told you not to tell us about the camping trip!”

“I can’t believe _you_ -” Harry points to Liam “-caught us fish for dinner. Who would’ve ever thought you’d be able to do that.”

Liam looks offended. “Excuse _me_. I have killed things before.”

“Oh yeah?” Louis challenges. “Like what?”

Liam blanches. “Uh, like…okay, fine. I’m not the most likely candidate for the job. But I still did better than Zayn!”

“I told you!” Zayn retorts. “I didn’t like watching them squirm around in pain.”

“Aw, Zaynie,” Niall says, getting up to give him a hug. “I’ll cuddle you later if you’re still feeling sad about it.”

“Come off it,” Louis complains. “You give me and Harry shit about being cuddly and then the two of you are like this?”

“The two of you,” Niall retorts as he stands up slowly, “are an entirely different breed of what you call cuddly. Zayn and I are cuddly when one of us is sad. The two of you are like, going to be cuddling when you’re ninety. Or would be if you’d ever get off your arses and do something about it.”

“That’s enough, Niall.” It’s Liam who says it, and that surprises Louis for reasons he can’t quite articulate. “Leave them be.”

Niall goes back to his own seat without another word, and then it’s quiet among them for a few minutes. Louis chances a glance at Harry and sees that Harry is already looking at him with a sad sort of smile.

“Anyway, let’s talk about how ridiculous it is that Eleanor, Annie, and Sophia were left with all of our campers,” Liam calls out as he passes out supplies for s’mores. They’d lit the campfire earlier and used the heat of it to cook the fish. The whole thing had been very rustic, even more so than the whole summer camp experience. Louis was surprised to find he liked it, something he probably wouldn’t have said at the beginning of the summer. The summer has changed him in more ways than one.

“How are three people supposed to take care of _all_ our campers when it takes five of us to barely wrangle them?” Harry asks.

“Dunno,” Liam shrugs. “Maybe they’ll get someone else to help. Maybe Simon and Ben will do it.”

“Not like they do much of anything else,” Niall quips, and they all laugh.

“Or maybe Nick. He’s a bit more capable. Seems to actually like kids,” Harry replies with a smile.

“Or maybe one of those counselors who never talks to us,” Louis says with a frown. “Honestly, all of us are British. Aren’t Americans supposed to be in love with us?”

“‘scuse you,” Niall retorts.

“Sorry, Nialler. All of us are European,” Louis clarifies. “With _accents_. Why do the other counselors avoid us so much?”

“Wish I knew, mate,” Zayn answers. He passes around a six pack they’d secretly bought on the drive up to the camp site. “But at least we have booze. And each other. Can always count on that.” he adds, and they all cheer to that.

*

“No funny business in there tonight,” Niall scolds Harry and Louis with a wagging finger as they break off from the group to head to their own tent.

“First you want us to get together,” Harry starts, his face a mask of confusion, “and now you’re telling us not to do anything? What happened to you being concerned that we were going to waste true love?”

“I don’t think true love is born on a sleeping bag in the middle of the forest,” Niall retorts.

“Your obsession with our sex life - or lack thereof - is really fucking weird, mate.” Louis hugs Niall even as he says it. Harry hugs him after pressing a smacking kiss to the side of his head and ruffling his hair.

“Night, Nialler. Try not to get your knickers in a twist about us and our lack of true love. I promise we’ll be okay,” Louis tells them as he hugs Zayn and then Liam goodnight.

Niall rolls his eyes and shoos them away.

Louis and Harry walk the twenty feet or so to their tent in silence, and then Harry unzips the tent, holding the door open for Louis to crawl in first.

“Bit cozy in here,” Louis notes as he scrambles on top of his sleeping bag and Harry follows in behind him. “Hope it won’t get too chilly.”

Harry laughs. “Pity you don’t have someone to keep you warm. Like, a human space heater or something.”

“Yeah, a real pity,” Louis grumbles as he tugs at Harry’s sleeve so he’ll move closer. Harry comes easily, sliding in next to Louis and curling up against him. “What will I do without one?”

“Well, maybe you can have me instead,” Harry teases. “You know, they say you should sleep naked to conserve body heat.”

“Harry Styles, you sly bastard, they do not say that!” Louis says, slapping Harry’s forearm.

“They do so, I saw it on the telly.” Harry protests, rubbing his arm with a pained expression on his face, though Louis knows it’s an act.

“Even so. I like you a lot, but I’m not risking sleeping naked in the same woods with all those bears. What if we have to run away in the middle of the night and we’re starkers?”

“Lou, if we’re running away from bears I hardly think you’re going to be worried about your clothing or lack of it. Think you’ll like, be running for your life.”

“Shut up,” Louis says with a pout, and then for lack of a better response, pulls Harry into him with a hand on his neck and presses their lips together.

*

“Is this what you lads thought the summer would be like?” Louis asks the next day, squinting into the sun as his eyes rake over the five of them, shirtless and clad only in swimming trunks as they lay on the sand. Next to him is a bag of rubbish, full of the remnants of sandwiches and fruit they’d had for lunch. The lads had protested at Harry making them stop to get a whole load of food on the drive up the day before, but they could now admit that Harry had had the right idea.

“Not at all,” Harry answers with a grin next to him. Louis can see the fond look in his eyes, something private reserved just for Louis.

“Definitely not,” agrees Zayn. “Expected to spend a lot of time on my own, thought I’d make some kind of art masterpiece in my free time. Except I have no free time cause you lads steal all of it.”

“Oi,” Louis says as he sits up and leans over Harry to pinch Zayn on the arm. “You love that we spend all our time with you.”

“I didn't expect it to be so much fun,” Liam admits over the sound of a potential argument breaking out between Louis and Zayn.

“What d’you mean?” Niall asks, as if he knows there's more to it than that.

“Like…I didn't expect to enjoy it so much. I did this before and it was all so serious, but I was good at that. I thought that was how it worked. But it’s been genuinely fun, lads.”

“Aw, Liam,” Niall smiles, sitting up to pinch Liam on the cheek. “Look how much you’ve grown.” And it's true. Between the five of them, Liam has been the one that’s blossomed the most, come out of his shell and transformed into someone much more vibrant, more fun and alive.

“Oh, shut it,” Liam retorts, but his face flushes all the same.

“You love us,” Niall teases, and Liam rolls his eyes, but he lets Niall pull him into a hug anyway. “Group cuddle!” Niall orders, and then they’re all jumping up off their towels to pile on top of Niall and Louis, wriggling around like they’re all thirteen year old campers.

“Alright, alright, I get it. Love you lads. Now get off me!” Liam cries. Louis presses a wet smacking kiss to Liam’s cheek and can’t help the smile on his face when he finally stands up. It’s pure happiness with these four lads, each of them so important to his summer in their own ways.

*

“Did you know that the stars don’t actually twinkle?”

They’ve made another campfire after dinner that night (“Burgers,” Harry had insisted in a tone that didn’t leave room for disagreement) and are now admiring the vastness of the night sky, beers in hand, when Niall speaks.

“What are you talking about?” Zayn’s voice is a little slurred, a mixture of sleepiness and two bottles of beer. “Of course they do. You know, the song,” and then he breaks into a terrible rendition of _Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star_.

“We think the stars twinkle, but they don’t,” Niall clarifies, cutting Zayn off before he can begin the second verse of the song. “It looks like they do, but that’s actually ‘cause of the Earth’s atmosphere. The density of the layers are different, and that kinda like, deflects the light. So it just looks like they’re twinkling, but really that’s the deflection of the light that you’re seeing.”

There’s a quiet moment where they all look up at the sky, processing this new information.

“Nialler, is there anything you _don’t_ know?” Harry teases, and it gets a laugh out of Niall.

“I’d say I still have a fair bit to learn about a lot of things, but I just read a lot,” Niall shrugs, and his voice is confident, like he knows Harry’s not making fun of him for it. “Interested in lots of things, you know? But especially space. Like, there’s so much out there that we don’t know about.”

“I’m gonna miss seeing the stars when we leave,” Liam muses. “‘S not like this back home. Can’t see any of them.”

“I know,” Zayn agrees. “Can’t believe there’s only two weeks left. What are you all going to be doing when we get out of here?”

“I’m going back to London, finishing uni this year,” Liam tells them, and just as he says it, Louis is keenly aware that for all they know about each other, for all they’ve talked about family lives and hopes and dreams and shared some of their deepest secrets, they’d never had this conversation, had never talked about what the five of them would do, what they would become, once they parted ways.

“Me too,” Harry adds. “Li, we’ll have to get together. We can hang out all the time.”

“‘Spose I’ll have to get some kind of job,” Niall answers. “Getting a bit sick of Ireland though, think I need a change.”

“Move to London,” Zayn says with a shrug, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. “I’ll be working in a an art studio. Then you can hang out with me and Harry and Liam.”

“Oi, what about me?” Louis asks with a teasing smile.

“What about you?” Zayn retorts, and then his face turns soft. “What are you planning to do, anyway? Weren’t you going off to become a famous actor?”

“Was thinking about not doing that anymore, actually,” Louis replies, giving a voice to the thoughts that have been bouncing around his head for the past few weeks.

“Oh yeah?” Harry asks, an eyebrow raised in surprise.

“Yeah, just don’t know if it’s for me anymore. Was thinking about moving back to London.”

“You were?” Harry’s tone is one of sheer surprise, and _oh right_ , Louis never told him about this plan. Well, better late than never.

“Mm,” Louis murmurs, and Harry’s face breaks into a bright smile, one that lights up the night sky. The lads wait for him to continue. “Been thinking about it for a couple weeks, really. Like, I just miss living in London _so much_. Moving home was nice for a bit, but it feels like it's time to go back, time to try something new.”

“I get that.” Niall says, and then his face lights up. “Hey! If we both move to London at the same time we could get a flat together.”

And…wow. That’s true. Louis hadn’t even thought of that, hadn’t thought much beyond _I’d love to go back to London again_.

“Are you gonna cover our flat in photos of space?” Louis teases. “Like will there be a photo of the International Space Shuttle on my ceiling?”

“No,” Niall says very seriously. “It’ll be on mine.”

There’s a few minutes of good natured ribbing, and then Zayn realizes something. “Hey, if we’re all going to be in London, then we can hang out all the time. We won’t have to say goodbye, not really.”

It’s such a nice thought, not to have to worry about the friends he’s going to have when he moves back. He hadn’t really kept in contact with most of his uni mates since he finished uni just before Christmas, and especially not lately when he’s had such little access to the internet at camp. Some of his mates will certainly be around, of course, and then he’ll have these four. It’ll be brilliant. Except for one thing, that whole work thing.

“What are you going to do for a job?” Harry asks then, and it’s like he can read Louis' mind. “What about acting?”

“I don’t know,” Louis begins honestly. “Acting is such a tough gig, and it was my dream for so long. But this summer, with all the kids…I just wonder if I should become some kind of teacher, do something more with kids.”

“Lou, you’d be amazing at that. You’re so good with them,” Zayn replies, and an unbidden smile rises to Louis' face. “What were you thinking, like teaching in a school or somethin’?”

“I dunno,” Louis sighs as he drains the last of his Corona. “More like an afterschool thing, like maybe a coach or something? Or maybe a drama teacher.”

“You should do it, Lou,” Harry says. “Honestly, you’d be brilliant.”

“Yeah,” Louis agrees softly, lost to his thoughts. “Maybe I will.”

*

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were thinking of moving back to London,” Harry complains that night as they slip into their sleeping bags, laying down to face one another. They’d unzipped both of them all the way and had spent last night wrapped around each other. Louis was pleased when Harry - the self-professed little spoon, which Louis had been more than happy to indulge - had only elbowed him in the ribs once while they slept. “Like, you’d think that’s the kind of thing you tell your boyfriend.”

And yeah, boyfriends. That’s what they were, right, and Louis really should have said something to Harry about this whole plan sooner. Should have checked with Harry first to see if he was up for Louis moving to London, into his space.

“I mean, I’m proper thrilled,” Harry continues, cutting off Louis’ train of thought before he starts to come up with something stupid like think Harry’s mad at him. Louis’ brain is the worst, always jumping to silly conclusions without absolutely anything to back them up. He’s thankful Harry knows this. “Like, it would’ve sucked to have you a three hour drive away. But now, if you and Niall move into a flat together, you’ll never be able to get rid of me. I’ll be over all the time, annoying you and bringing you presents and kissing you good morning and doing all kinds of boyfriend things.”

As he speaks he drags his toes down the hair on Louis’ shins, tickling him as he works his way down. He tangles his toes with Louis’ and the feeling of it makes Louis giggle.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Louis says, open and earnest. “I honestly meant to, it wasn’t like I was keeping it from you. That was never my intention. I guess I just got caught up in things and forgot.”

“I know,” Harry replies, and he leans in to press a closed mouth kiss to Louis' lips, and Louis can feel him smiling through it. Harry’s giddy like a little kid who just found out that they were going to Disneyland Paris tomorrow. “I’m so excited though, like really, genuinely excited. Like, my flat’s a bit of a shit hole but I can’t wait for you to see it, and you can stay over whenever you want, and I’ll finally be able to cook you a proper meal, and we can go to the cinema and snog in the back row like we talked about, and -”

“I can’t wait,” Louis laughs, leaning in for a kiss. “It’ll be brilliant.”

*

“I think we should tell the lads,” Harry says through kisses two days later. It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and there’s ten days left of camp. “I think we owe it to tell them the truth before they find out for themselves.”

“Mmm,” Louis mumbles as Harry keeps kissing him. He really would rather not think about this right now, would rather they spend their time waiting for the brownies to cool kissing, or better yet, getting off. Ooh, maybe Harry can do that thing with his mouth that he did the other night in tent, the thing that had Louis biting his own lip so hard he drew blood, trying not to scream so that the others wouldn’t hear. Louis would really like it if he did that again. Would like it very much a lot.

“Why don’t we talk about this later,” Louis smirks, “and you can take off my pants instead.” His voice is teasing and light, and it gets a sharp giggle out of Harry.

“You’re so transparent,” Harry says, even as his hands come to rest on Louis' belt, thumbs tucked in his waistband. “I can see right through you.”

“Well, at least I’m honest,” Louis replies cheekily, and he muffles Harry’s answering laugh with his mouth. There’s a hot buzz of tension under his skin, born from lazy kissing against the work surface for the past few minutes and two nights spent tangled up with Harry and then having to spend the two last nights alone.

“What do you want?” Harry asks as he presses kisses in a line down Louis' jaw. He rolls his hips down against Louis', and the contact makes Louis swallow, hard. Harry twists to kiss the column of his throat in response.

“You,” Louis answers simply.

“And how do you want me?” Harry’s pushed the scoop neck of Louis' t-shirt down, nipping at the available areas of his chest, leaving little bite marks as he goes and then running over them with his tongue, soothing each area.

“You-your mouth,” Louis stutters, and the way Harry freezes, his mouth perched just on the edge of Louis' left nipple, tells Louis he’s looking for him to elaborate. “The thing you did with your mouth that night in the tent. You know, with your finger, my cock…the thing that almost made me cry!” He finally gets out, frustrated, and Harry grins and barks out a laugh.

Louis frowns. “You little shit, you knew exactly what I meant.”

“I did, yeah,” Harry admits, “but I just wanted to hear you say it. Wanted you to admit that I made you cry.”

“I hate you.”

“You really, really don’t,” Harry says with a smile, and he kisses Louis again.

“Fine, I don’t hate you. I totally don’t hate you. And I will hate you even less if you make me come soon.”

“We’re in a kitchen, Lou,” Harry says, pulling back so that he can look at Louis properly. He’s grinning, and his dimple is on full display. Louis wants to kiss it, so he does, leaning forward to press his lips there before pulling back.

“So? We’ll clean up.”

“That’s so unhygienic though. It’s gross. I cook in here for class! Think of the children!”

“I literally just said that we could clean it up if we make a mess. Now, we have thirty minutes before the brownies are done. Do you want to spend it arguing about cleanliness or do you want to spent it getting off?” Louis' tone is sharp, trying to convey that he’s serious about this and really would like Harry to take his pants off like, five minutes ago.

“Uh,” Harry looks torn, the bastard, actually looks around the kitchen as if he’s making a decision, as if it’s a difficult choice for him.

“Harold.”

“Okay, fine, fine, you’re right.”

“I’m always right,” Louis says as he lets Harry guide him to the other side of the kitchen, taking small jerky steps as he walks backward, Harry’s hands on his waist as he trusts Harry to lead him. They kiss as Harry presses him up against the counter, and Louis throws his head back, leaving his neck exposed for Harry to kiss.

“Okay, so you need to be quiet, alright? Anyone could come in here at any moment.”

“The door’s shut,” Louis retorts, a little weak, and yeah, maybe that’s more because he has a habit of making a little too much noise when he’s with Harry. He’s all about the spirit of the secret rendezvous, sure, but he’s never been that good at letting someone know they’re making him feel really damn good.

“Like, for real, Lou. No yelling.”

“That was one time! And your fault.” If Louis was more careful, more clear headed, he’d probably insist they do this somewhere else, someone where a staff member or fellow counselor wouldn’t come looking for them. Everyone’s off watching a movie, though, the midday sun too hot for them to spend time outside. And anyway, Louis is too light headed and too desperate to even suggest moving this somewhere else.

“Still,” Harry says, his hands going to Louis’ waistband, undoing the buckle and pulling his belt back. He’s teasing Louis, who’s whining against him. “Promise you can be quiet?”

“Would you fucking get on with it, _please_?” Louis groans. When Harry doesn’t say anything, his face breaks. “Fine, fine, I’ll be as quiet as I can. Now, can you please get on with it before my cock falls off?”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Harry says with a grin, pulling Louis' belt out of the next loop. He’s still slow, teasing him even as he kisses Louis. Louis can feel him smirking, and yeah, Harry gets off on teasing Louis, it’s a confirmed fact.

“Harry, fuck, please,” Louis pleads, _begs_ , and his head falls back in desperation, eyes squeezed shut tight as Harry pulls the belt off the next loop. With his other hand, Harry pushes Louis' shirt up so he can bend down to kiss the skin of his stomach.

It happens all at once then, a clanging sound and a sharp rush of pain and a door swinging shut and the feeling of Harry’s lips on his stomach and a soft “Holy shit” and the realization he’s just hit his head on a saucepan and - _oh fuck_.

He freezes, eyes flying open, and Harry pulls back at the motion, very aware something is wrong. Louis just blinks, jerks his head up slowly, and Harry’s movement is so slow as he turns around, like he knows it’s as bad as it seems without even having to look.

“Hi girls,” Harry says slowly, and it’s Sara and Mallory.

They’re standing there wide eyed, and it’s like all four of them are frozen. Harry has Louis' t-shirt rucked up to his armpits, his hands have stilled on the last loop of Louis' belt, the majority of it dangling down beyond his hand, and it’s clear that none of them know what to say.

Once again, Louis' lack of bloodflow to his brain is really interfering with things here, because if he were thinking clearly he’d be pushing Harry off him, fixing his shirt and his hair and making himself more presentable, not standing there, fucking _frozen_ and unable to move. As it is, he’s suddenly very aware of how he’s parted his legs, how one of Harry’s legs has slotted in between them. Very aware of how hard he is, very aware that Harry is in the same boat against his thigh.

“Holy shit,” Sara says, and Mallory gives a low whistle.

“Uh, surprise?” Harry says, and Louis' head falls forward onto Harry’s shoulder at this as he bites back a laugh. It’s terrible, everything is fucking terrible, and now that he’s no longer frozen all he can do is laugh.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe this,” Mallory says when she seems to regain awareness. “I can’t _believe_ it.”

Harry pulls away and runs his fingers through his hair, and even with his back to Louis, Louis can tell that it’s a gesture born from stress, one of despair.

“Girls,” Harry says slowly, taking another step forward as if he’s approaching a spooked animal, “you can’t tell anyone about this. You have to _promise_.” His voice is calm, but Louis can detect the desperation beneath.

“Oh my god,” Mallory says again, and Louis is tempted to ask if she’s alright. He settles for fixing his t-shirt, pulling the thin fabric back down and adjusting his jeans. “Okay, I mean…alright. Just, wow.”

She looks over frantically at Sara. “We won’t tell, I swear,” Sara gets out in a rush. “Just…I can’t believe this.”

“Did you know that-” Mallory starts, turning to Sara, and then Sara talks over her, “No, I had absolutely no idea, I mean, I thought that he-”

“Oh my God, wait til we tell Amber, she’s going to _die_ ,” Mallory squeals, interrupting Sara, and Louis and Harry are just standing there watching this all play out.

“Okay, well, I guess we’ll leave you two to it - _holy fucking shit_ \- and sorry for like, interrupting,” Sara says really quickly, “and I promise we won’t tell anyone.”

“Okay, bye!” Mallory exclaims, and then she pulls Sara by the hand and they’re both gone from the room as quick as they came in.

“Oh my God,” Harry mumbles, hands running over his face as he stumbles to the counter and slowly drops to the ground, using the cabinets to support his back. Louis drops to sit down next to him, looking no less concerned.

“Well, we definitely shouldn’t have been doing _that_ here,” Louis says, and then they lock eyes and burst into laughter.

They laugh so hard they’re crying (“Lou, tears are genuinely coming out of your eyes right now.”) and Louis falls into Harry’s side, eventually ending with his head in Harry’s lap.

“I can’t fucking believe that just happened,” Harry admits, combing through Louis' hair with his fingers.

“And of course it had to be those two! They’re both in love with you,” Louis adds when Harry’s face shows his confusion. “Anytime I’m around them they don’t stop going on about your tattoos, how cute you are, how they want to be Mrs. Harry Styles, on and on.”

Harry barks out a laugh, and then when Louis doesn’t react, his face falls. “Oh. You’re not joking.”

Louis reaches up to cup Harry’s cheek with his palm. “Babe, I am one hundred percent serious. They’re obsessed.”

“Well, I suppose I should be flattered. Not sure how they didn’t realize I was gay, but okay.”

“Suppose they’ll be heartbroken now,” Louis says sadly. “Poor Harry has a boyfriend.”

Harry laughs. “I think they’ll get over it. Besides, they seemed more interested in the two of us together than anything.” He wiggles his eyebrows, and Louis pulls his hand away from Harry’s cheek to lightly slap it.

“Gross, stop it. I don’t need to think about our teenage campers being interested in sex.”

“Well, whether they were interested or not,” Harry says just as the timer for the brownies beeps. “They killed my boner. So maybe we can resume this later.”

“Preferably somewhere more private,” Louis objects, as he takes Harry’s outstretched hand to pull himself up, “seeing as you failed to choose somewhere suitably private this time.”

“This was not my idea!” Harry sputters in outrage. “It was one hundred percent yours.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Semantics. Anyway, your fault,” Louis teases with a kiss to the back of Harry’s neck as he pulls the brownies out of the oven.

“Whatever.”

*

“So we’ll tell them tomorrow, yeah?” Harry asks at dinner that night, his bare feet tangled with Louis' under the table.

“Tomorrow,” Louis agrees. “But tonight: orgasms. You owe me one after we got caught.”

“I told you, that wasn’t my fault! That wasn’t my idea.”

Louis is about to protest when Niall approaches the table. “What wasn’t your idea, Hazza? Hopefully not putting whipped cream all over Zayn’s face overnight - did ya see that this morning? Think you were gone for your run when we all woke up and found it, but honestly, we should _not_ have shown these kids The Parent Trap, it’s given them all sorts of ideas.”

Louis giggles, covering his mouth with his hand. “Oh god, I didn’t know about that, but that sounds horrible.”

“That does explain why they asked me to get them whipped cream from the kitchen yesterday,” Harry says idly, and then Louis and Niall glare at him. “What? I thought it was for ice cream sundaes or something. Don’t look at me like that!”

“Alright, mate. Just make sure Zayn doesn’t find out, wouldn’t want him to get proper pissed at you,” Niall advises.

“Don’t tell Zayn what?” And of course it’s Zayn and Liam coming to sit down next to them. Louis wants to scream; this whole day is a mess.

“Nothing,” Harry says, at the same time that Louis teases, “heard you got into a spot of trouble this morning.”

“Oh, knock it off,” Zayn retorts, eyes rolled. “Next time it’ll probably be you if you're not careful.”

*

“So you're sure no one’s coming in here, right?” Louis asks for the third time in as many minutes as Harry undoes his belt.

“Yes, Lou.” Harry says in an indulgent tone, and _shit_ , just the sound of his voice like that makes Louis think of the future, asking Harry if he picked up his favorite brand of crisps or if he bought more diapers for the baby. Which, wow, that’s a lot to handle. And it's also a little early for that. All that can come later.

First, sex.

“I put an Out of Order sign on the door,” Harry says smugly, and Louis knows he thinks he's clever for coming up with that one. He chooses not to comment, knowing it could devolve into another argument, more banter, and then Louis’ orgasm would probably be delayed by at least five minutes. Which, after this morning’s mishap, is something he can't afford right now.

“You're a real keeper,” Louis murmurs, kissing the smirk off Harry’s face.

They’re in the bathroom, the one reserved for the staff that’s attached to the nurse’s office. It’s been on Harry’s list of ‘Secret Places to Have Secret Sex’ for ages (and yes, there’s an actual list; Louis is half in love with a total idiot) but they haven’t actually used it. Until now.

“Yeah. I know.” Harry kisses him and Louis clutches at the fabric of the shirt clinging to his back, that floral button down he’d been wearing the first day they met. He pulls off Louis' belt in a quick, practiced motion, much quicker than this morning, no longer teasing. He undoes the button of Louis' jeans, pushes them to the ground so they can pool around Louis' ankles.

Louis could cry with relief when Harry gets to his knees and slips his hands around to grope at Louis' arse.

“Lou,” Harry murmurs into the skin below Louis' belly button. Louis can feel his stomach muscles contract as Harry drags his teeth over the skin at the same time he grips his arse cheeks and squeezes.

“You have the nicest arse. Have I ever told you that before? Love how it feels in my hands, how there’s so much of it, you’re so fucking fit, Lou, so fit, drives me crazy,” Harry continues. His voice is breathy, a little whiny and desperate, almost as if he’s getting sucked off right now, that’s how turned on he sounds. He presses his cheek to Louis' stomach and angles his head up to make eye contact, and his eyes are the darkest green Louis has ever seen them. Louis’ hand comes up to stroke Harry’s hair, running his fingers through it and cupping the back of his neck softly.

 _I love you_ , he thinks as he smiles down at Harry, the thought hitting him sudden and sharp. And _oh shit,_ he’s in love with Harry. Actually really _loves_ him. But fuck, what an inopportune time to recognize it.

The realization doesn’t scare him like he’d expect. Instead, he feels fireworks in his belly and, at the same time, a sense of calm that he always feels around Harry. Like his world is a little off-kilter except when Harry’s around to set it right again.

“What are you thinking?” Harry asks, slipping his hands into Louis' pants and squeezing the skin of his arse.

 _Tomorrow, I’ll tell him tomorrow_ , Louis thinks. He feels suddenly too warm for the room, too big for his skin, like it might kill him to keep this secret in for too long.

“Just happy,” he answers with a smile. “Happy here with you.”

Harry grins and says, “Me too.” He dips his head back down and mouths at Louis' cock through the fabric of his pants. Louis is already hard, has been for ages, and he groans when Harry makes contact.

A few minutes of teasing later, Harry is pulling his pants down to join his jeans on the floor, and Louis hisses when Harry grips his cock in his large palm. Soon Louis’ world is reduced to the feeling of Harry’s warm, wet mouth on his cock, the sound of his own groans and these little pleased noises that Harry keeps making, his brain filled with a steady beat of _Harry, Harry, Harry_. He can't focus on anything else, has no room for it, not when his entire brain space is devoted to Harry and what he’s currently doing with his beautiful mouth.

Which is why it's such a shock when there's a large screech and the slam of a door and outside, a scream of “Holy fucking shit.”

It’s Niall.

Harry pulls off of Louis with a wet pop, but there’s nothing sexy about it. Louis feels like all the air has gone out of the room as Harry leans back, still on his knees, and looks up at Louis. There’s a small smile on his face and he’s shaking his head slowly.

“Again, Harold, _really_?” Louis chastises, hand outstretched for Harry to grab onto as he stands up.

Outside, there’s muffled shrieking and Louis would bet money it’s Niall.

Harry falls against Louis like a dead weight, his head dropped into his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he groans.

“I can’t believe this,” Louis says as he bends down to pull on his pants and his jeans again, pushing Harry upright as he goes. “Is this really happening?”

“It’s not all my fault!” Harry protests, suddenly more alert.

“Twice in one day! Harry, honestly,” Louis shakes his head, incredulous.

Louis buttons his jeans and reaches up to run his fingers through Harry’s hair, pulling it back into place. The quiff is all messed up but it’s not like Niall doesn’t know what they were up to - _oh God,_ Niall actually saw Harry on his knees in front of Louis, he saw Harry giving Louis a blow job, _oh God_. Louis shuts his eyes and wills himself to disappear.

“I mean, I guess we were gonna tell them soon anyway?” Harry asks weakly, shrugging one shoulder. The gesture is half-hearted. Louis wants to smack him. “Plus, you were here too. It takes two to tango.”

“How was I supposed to know he’d come in? I trusted your stupid sign when you said it would work!” Louis retorts, letting Harry pull his shirt back into place for him. “I can’t believe this, twice in one day.”

“What do we do?”

“I mean, I guess we have to go out there and talk to him!” Louis says, pacing the room. “That is, if he’ll even look at us now. God. We’re so fuckin’ dumb, Haz, how did this happen?”

“Listen. We’ll go out there, we’ll tell him the truth, we’ll explain everything, and then we’ll promise him a lifetime’s supply of beer. How’s that sound?”

“Harold. You _really_ think that’ll help him recover from the trauma of seeing the two of us having sex? You really think that’s all it’ll take?” Harry stutters, but he comes up short. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. God, I’m never gonna let you live this down. I’m gonna make fun of you for this when you’re eighty, I swear.”

He grabs Harry by the hand and tugs him out of the room before either of them can let that statement settle too much in their brains to think about the implications of it.

When they get outside, Niall’s pacing the grass in the dark, looking quite stressed. To make matters worse, Zayn and Liam are standing off to the side, talking to each other with concerned expressions. Louis sneaks a quick glance at Harry, who looks a bit pale.

“Look,” Louis says under his breath. “We’ll tell them and get it over with. They’ll forgive us eventually, yeah?”

“I hope so,” Harry says, right as Niall looks up and spots them. He storms up to them, and Liam and Zayn follow, standing behind him. Louis feels like they’re police officers come to arrest them, and he instinctively curls a bit closer to Harry’s side.

“The two of you,” Niall says as he pokes each of them in the sternum with a sharp finger, “have a lot to explain.”

Louis and Harry only nod, rendered mute by Niall’s glare.

“First of all, what the fuck. Secondly, when I suggested the two of you get together I didn’t mean you should be going at it in the _bathroom_! Honestly, what kind of romance is that?”

Louis can’t tell if he should laugh or cry. He settles for being embarrassed. He wants to hold onto Harry’s hand for reassurance but even in the heat of the moment he recognizes now is probably not the best time for that.

“Niall,” Harry starts, “it’s not like that. It’s not - we’re not-”

“No, I’m doing the talking,” Niall interrupts, voice harsh, and even Liam and Zayn look shocked. “Because I’m the one that had to see… _that_ , so the two of you owe me big time.”

Harry frowns.

“Okay,” he continues, “so honestly, what the fuck. Explain yourselves. And, by the way, the two of you owe me a fuck ton of booze so I can bleach my brain.”

Louis looks at Harry and the two of them burst into giggles, because Harry was right. That’s really all it’ll take to calm Niall down.

“We’ve been hooking up in secret for six weeks now,” Harry says, he just comes right out with it just like that, and Louis turns to him, eyes wide. The others all turn to him with the exact same face. “But like, not just hooking up. Dating. Doing it properly, like.”

“Did you really think that was the best way to go about it? Just straight out with it like that?” Louis asks quietly, but then he becomes distracted by Niall’s shaky posture, the way he looks like he might fall over any minute now.

“You okay there, Ni?” Louis reaches out a hand to steady him by the shoulder.

“I - I can’t believe this,” Niall starts, voice unsteady. “You two have been hooking up this whole time? After us telling you you should get together for the entire summer?”

“Well, not because you kept bugging us about it,” Louis says with a smile, “but yeah. Since the Fourth of July. I guess you’re a bit more perceptive than you thought.”

“Wow,” Niall replies, and he goes over to take a seat on the bench on the porch. Harry takes a seat next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “I can’t believe this is just now coming out. Like…we’re leaving in ten days. And we’re just now finding out?”

“We’re very sorry we didn’t tell you guys,” Louis says, looking at Liam and Zayn, who also look a bit shocked. Apparently they really had no idea. “If it helps, which I think it doesn’t, we were planning to tell you tomorrow.”

“We tried, honestly. But you would ignore us, or interrupt, and then finally it became more fun to try to keep it a secret from all of you.” Harry’s voice is the most sincere he’s ever heard it, like he knows he needs to make this right. Because yeah, this is the worst possible way the three of them could have found out. This is exactly the situation they wanted to avoid.

“I hate you,” Niall hisses. “Holy shit, I can’t believe the two of you are dating. I can’t believe it.” But then he smiles, and Louis can breathe a little easier.

“Well, believe it,” Louis says. “Because it’s been happening for a while now.”

“How did this even happen? Like when did you realize you had feelings for each other? Who made the first move? Were you not at least a tiny bit fucking scared of Simon firing you?” Niall asks, questions flying out of his mouth a million miles a minute.

“This makes so much sense now,” Liam responds before Louis or Harry can answer. He speaks slowly, like the thoughts are dawning on him now. “All those times I woke up in the middle of the night and you weren’t in your bed,” he says, pointing at Louis, “you were with _Harry_. You weren’t getting a cup of tea or going for a walk to clear your head. You were with Harry!”

Zayn gasps, turning on his heel from looking at Louis to look at Harry. “Oh my god. The Fourth of July, you said, yeah? That’s the time we heard you sneaking back into the cabin and you said you were outside cause you said you heard a bear. I remember thinking, what the hell, why would there be a bear? And then that other time, you had bruises on your neck but you said it was from a food fight during your cooking class…you’re such a bastard, Harry Styles.”

Harry’s smile is bright and sharp. “Yeah, I still can’t believe you fell for those ones, I was sure you were going to call me out,” he admits as he stands and allows himself to be pulled into a hug.

“Love you lads,” Liam says, and then he brings Niall to his feet and the five of them are hugging. Harry drops a kiss to the top of Louis' head and Louis thinks _we’re going to be okay_.

“Okay, answers to all my questions, please,” Niall orders as they all break apart. “I’m very happy for you and I can’t wait to hold your twelve babies one day. But first I want the full story, start to finish. Don’t leave anything out.”

*

“Watch out, Harry! Heads up!”

The voice comes from the left, and it’s Sara. Louis blinks as a frisbee flies toward them and has just a split second to pull Harry toward him by the shoulder towards his own body. The frisbee lands to their right with a soft _thunk_ in the sand, and Harry looks a bit dazed as he pulls away from Louis.

“What was that?”

“Almost hit you,” Louis explains. He can’t clarify further because Sara and Mallory are running toward them, shouting apologies.

“Ah, double trouble, here you are,” Harry says with a smile as he picks up the frisbee and holds it in his hands.

“Hi, sorry again, really didn’t mean to do that,” Mallory begins, but her voice makes it sound like she means the exact opposite. “Totally my fault. Anyway, how are you two doing? How’s things?”

She winks suggestively. Louis covers his mouth before he’s caught laughing at her.

Harry looks taken aback. “We’re uh - we’re good, thanks for asking.”

“We just wanted to apologize for last week again. Like…we’re very happy for the two of you.”

“Yes, very happy,” Sara agrees. “I mean, I’m sad I won’t get to date you, but I guess if you have to date anyone else it might as well be Louis. You’re very cute together.”

Louis opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. He wants to wrap his arm around Harry’s waist, pull him toward him, tell these girls to go away. “Tha- thanks. I guess?”

Harry laughs. “Well, sorry to disappoint girls, but I think I’ll be with Louis for quite a while. If it doesn’t work out though, I’ll give you a call.” He gives them a wink, that typical cheeky Styles charm, and then the girls are off, laughing as they run back down the beach.

“You’re a hot commodity, Styles,” Louis says, situating himself so that he’s facing Harry, mirroring his criss crossed legs position so he can see him better.

“You better stake your claim soon,” Harry teases.

“I thought I already did?” Louis furrows his brows. “You know, with that whole ‘making you my boyfriend’ thing. And, don’t tell me you already forgot about the whole ‘I love you’ thing.”

Harry beams, a smile so wide that it must hurt his face to hold it. Louis can tell he’s thinking of last week, when they both had a night off and Louis took him to dinner for a proper date. They both dressed up a bit and went to a fancy Italian place where they shared a bottle of wine and fed each other pasta (“Ooh, Lou, let’s do that thing from Lady and the Tramp!”) and Louis dragged him for ice cream and on the side of the street, sitting on an old, peeling bench, told him that he was in love with him.

“I would never forget,” Harry says, eyes crinkled as he smiles. “Love you too.”

“I know.”

Louis sneaks a look around, notices Simon has his back to them and no one else is watching, and leans in for a quick kiss, just a peck, not enough, but still something. He pulls back and, not for the first time today, admires how fit Harry looks, shirtless and golden brown, tattoos on his stomach, his tiny yellow shorts making a reappearance to torture Louis.

A few minutes pass where they just stare at each other goofily, making funny faces to try to make the other laugh.

“Ew, will the two of you stop it? Go be gross somewhere else,” Niall says as he drops himself onto the sand to lay down next to Louis.

“You love us, Nialler. Plus, isn't this what you wanted? The two of us happy and in love?”

“You mean did I want to see you sticking your tongue down Harry’s throat anytime we’re alone? Absolutely not.”

“Rethinking that decision to get a flat with me, Nialler? Worried that Harry’ll be over all the time? You can't change your mind at this stage, I already told my mum we were living together.”

“Plus, you don't want to get rid of me,” Harry warns. “I make delicious fajitas.”

“Are we talking about how gross Harry and Louis are?” Zayn asks as he and Liam walk up and pass out cans of soft drinks to each of them. “This is my favorite topic.”

“Ew, don’t remind me,” Liam says, face pinched.

“We aren't that gross!” Louis protests, voice weak. They are, though, grossly in love with each other, and he’s not sorry about it. Not one bit.

“You really are, mate,” Liam teases with a gentle punch to the shoulder as he sits down and cracks open his soft drink. “But hey, we’re happy for you. Right, lads?”

“Right,” Niall says reluctantly, but Louis knows it’s all teasing, that Niall’s thrilled for Harry and Louis. He’s told them plenty of times over the last week, in fact. Louis is beginning to think that the lads might be happier than Harry and Louis are themselves.

“Well, personally, I can’t believe this is it,” Zayn exclaims, stretching out on the towel.

Liam frowns, shakes his head. “Hey, no, we still have two days left.”  
  
“I know, Liam, but this is the end. The kids leave tomorrow. Remember at the start, Nick gave us that calendar, and it said ‘End of Summer Beach Party’ in August. Never thought it’d actually come. And now, here we are,” he spreads his arms wide toward the scene before them, kids splashing in the ocean and eating burgers and running around, “the End of Summer Beach Party.”

“‘S a bit ridiculous, yeah?” Harry asks, leaning in toward Louis as they both lay down. He sneaks another quick glance around and then wraps his arm around Harry’s shoulder, dropping a kiss to the top of his head.

“What d’you mean, love?” Next to them, Niall pretends to gag. Louis just hits him on the stomach. “Shut it, you. Let my boyfriend speak.”

“Oh god, I’m really regretting agreeing to live with you,” Niall says again, and Zayn and Liam laugh.

Harry sits up, dropping Louis’ arm as he goes. “Remember what I said about the fajitas?” He points a finger at Niall. “Be careful or I’ll never make you any.”

“Ooh, I’m so scared of you,” Niall teases, voice light. He rolls his eyes, but Harry doesn’t push it.

“Anyway, as I was saying before Niall interrupted me, it’s just like. We all came here and didn’t know each other, and it’s a bit ridiculous that now the summer’s over and we’re gonna say bye to all these kids and it’ll just like, dissolve. That’s it. No more summer camp. It’s over.”

“Oh, Hazza, don’t get sad on us now,” Zayn says. “The kids loved you.”

“Some more than others,” Louis interjects, thinking of Sara and Mallory and the countless other girls he always heard gossiping about Harry.

“Some more than others,” Zayn indulges. “But really, Haz, you were wonderful. Don’t be sad about it. Plus, you get to go home and you’ll be keeping us. We’ll see you all the time. Can’t get rid of us that easily.”

“No, you can’t,” Liam agrees, and then suddenly there’s another group hug and Louis finds himself in the middle of it, so consumed with his love for Harry and the other lads and this whole place, where he figured himself out, where he fell in love.

 _Sappy_ , he thinks, _you’ve gotten so sappy_.

But hey, with his boy next to him and their friends surrounding them, he’s allowed to be.

*

Louis shuts off the fan with a quiet _click_ and the cabin falls into silence. For the first time he can remember, there’s no noise at all. No screaming kids outside, no one snoring in the cabin, no one pestering him to help with with a project or asking him for a piggyback ride to lunch. There’s not even Liam anymore; he’d left this morning with a tight hug for Louis and what he swore was dust in his eye.

Louis takes a clean t-shirt out of the suitcase and takes his dirty one off, dropping it into the suitcase on his bed. There’s another suitcase and his massive duffel bag by the door, already packed. He looks up from his packing to find Harry leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.

“Hi,” he says quietly once Louis spots him, his eyes crinkled around the edges and a broad smile on his face.

“Hi yourself,” Louis replies as he zips up the suitcase, the clean shirt still sitting on top of it. That’s it, that’s the last one, the summer’s over, he’s heading home. He sidles up to Harry, watching Harry’s smile widen as he approaches. “All done,” he announces before wrapping his arms around Harry’s waist and squeezing, relishing in the solid weight that's there as Harry holds him tight.

“What, are you not gonna wear a shirt?” Harry asks. “Not like I’m complaining, mind you.”

“Yeah, was thinking I might go shirtless on the flight. Let everyone see what they’re missing out on,” Louis teases, and then they fall into contemplative silence.

“Can’t believe that’s it,” Harry says into his hair, and Louis just presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Love you,” Harry continues.

“Love you too.” Louis pulls away to survey the cabin. He once thought of cabin 18 as a cozy, wooden building with no charm. It’s become home over the summer, an unexpected safe place, but so has the boy in his arms.

“Hey,” Louis says suddenly. “We’ve never kissed in my cabin before.”

Harry looks contemplative. “You know, you’re right,” he realizes. “Maybe it’s time to rectify that.”

He kisses Louis then, and it’s lazy, comfortable, relaxed. They kiss like they have nothing to be afraid of, because they don't. With camp over and the threat of being caught no longer a factor, they have all the time in the world to kiss like this.

He’s not entirely sure what's waiting for them when they get back to England. Louis is moving in with Niall and hoping to find a job, Harry is finishing uni and they'll be together all the time. He's not sure what else will happen, but that fact he knows with certainty.

Louis can't believe he got all this - new best mates, a career change, the love of his life - just from one summer. But he did, and he doesn't know how he got so lucky.

“One last swim in the lake?” Harry whispers. “I'll race you.”

Louis grins, already stripping to his pants, and then the two of them take off, running for the water hand in hand, their laughter audible throughout the empty campground.

 _The best summer of your life,_ his mum had said. Turns out she was right.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr [ here](http://http://afirethatcannotdie.tumblr.com/) and there's a rebloggable fic post [here](http://afirethatcannotdie.tumblr.com/post/156583157096/the-boys-of-summer-by-afirethatcannotdie-i). I'd love to hear what you thought in the comments!


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